


When the Wind is Southerly

by TheGoodTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)



Series: IT'S ALL TERRIBLY SIMPLE [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Babies, Canon-Typical Violence, Coma, Confrontations, Council, Discussion of Abortion, Epiphanies, Episode: s02e09-10 What's My Line, Episode: s02e11 Ted, Episode: s02e12 Bad Eggs, Episode: s02e18 Killed by Death, Episode: s02e19 I Only Have Eyes For You, Episode: s03e01 Anne, Episode: s03e09 The Wish, Episode: s06e17 Normal Again, Evil Vampire Rituals, F/F, F/M, Free Will, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Ghosts, Growing Up, Intervention, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, Lies, Loyalties, M/M, Memory Loss, Mild Language, Misdirection, Older Man/Younger Woman, On the Run, Parent-Child Relationship, Patriarchy, Responsibility, Sequel: Slings and Arrows to begin posting in 2017, Slumming, Sneakiness, Teen Pregnancy, Vampires, bad breaks, lucky breaks, medical drama, people can surprise you, power, rationality, some Canon Dialogue, switched at birth - Freeform, tradition, uncertain parentage, vamp on vamp viloence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-02-07 16:25:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 57,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1905783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/TheGoodTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Giles and Buffy try to decide (and agree on) how to deal with Buffy's pregnancy, legal, medical and family troubles throw everything into confusion for the entire Scooby Gang.  Meanwhile, a vengeful ghost terrorizes Sunnydale High, but who is this ghost, and what does it really want?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Something One Plays Around With

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lady's Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223416) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 



> For more information on Canon Compliance/Divergence and Story Mechanics and Themes, see series description.
> 
> WARNING: Although there are no graphic depictions of sexual activity in this story, the plot is dependent on the fact of sexual activity having taken place between adults and teenagers.

Sunnydale, CA. March 3, 1998

 

“Is this really necessary?” Willard asked. He shifted his limbs awkwardly and felt of his throat as if trying to understand where that gravelly voice was coming from.

“Yes,” Amy assured him, “it is. I could use a glamour, but then if we get separated, people would start to see through it. This is much more dependable.”

“But it just feels so... unnatural,” Willard complained.

“It is unnatural,” Amy reminded him, getting a bit testy, “That's why they call it 'magic'. Anyway, do you want to see Giles in the hospital or don’t you? I mean, you said it yourself, it’s the perfect disguise.”

Willard let out a pensive sigh. At least, coming from Willow, it would have been a sigh. From him, it sounded more like a horse snorting. Amy was right as usual. As it was, the only people Willow was allowed to see from Sunnydale High were Amy and ‘Daniel’. If word got back to her mother that she had been seen visiting a member of Buffy’s inner circle, she wouldn’t even be allowed that.

“Alright,” he said resolutely, “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I just want to look in on Mom one more time before we go.”

“Will you relax?” said Amy dismissively, “It’s just a Needle’s Eye Sleeping Spell. I use it on my dad all the time. It’s nothing.”

“Yeah,” Willard laughed nervously, “It’s nothing.” But it didn’t feel like nothing.

“Just remember,” Amy explained reassuringly, “when you want her to wake up, you kiss her on the forehead, or the cheek, doesn’t matter, and you say...”

“Dear mother of mine, come back to me,” Willard recited dutifully.

“Exactly. See, what could go wrong?”

“You want that alphabetically or by order of magnitude?” said Willard, attempting levity.

“Come on,” Amy cajoled, “you’ve been talking about how much you want to do this for a week. This is the first day we’ve been alone in the house without that creepy Rabbi hanging around all the time, and it’s the last day too, because starting tomorrow you’ll be stuck over at Kent Prep until five o’clock every day.”

“You’re right,” said Willard resolutely. “It’s now or never.” Extending his arm to Amy with a flourish, exactly the way his (which is to say Willow’s) father would have, he added, “Shall we, my dear?”

“Yes, let’s” said Amy, taking his arm with a mischievous look in her eyes. “We can take Sheila’s car.”

 *****

As Buffy walked the anti-septic white hallways of Sunnydale General Hospital on her way to Giles’ room, she couldn’t quite shake the same creepy feeling she always had in hospitals. It felt like death was stalking her. 

It hadn’t helped that she’d had to kill some kind of an invisible monster on this very floor less than a week ago, or that said monster had taken several pretty good slices out of her with it's razor-sharp claws, wounds that had taken three days and mass quantities of pizza, ice cream and other essential nutrients to heal. 

She kept thinking there might be more of them lurking about. Hospitals were all about death.

Except, of course, for the parts that weren’t. The truth of that struck Buffy suddenly in the stomach. She sprinted for the ladies' room and had to call upon some kind of zen inspired reservoir of unnatural inner calm to keep from pulling the stall door off its hinges. 

Joy, more vomiting. For the fifth time today, which made five days this had been going on. A part of her kept thinking it must be the flu. It had to be _some_ kind of bug, it was too soon to be anything else. 

But she didn't have any other symptoms. Other than being too bone-tired to even get up and patrol most nights. Not to mention the fact that the flu doesn't usually leave you feeling hungry again as soon as you're finished throwing up. Besides, she knew it wasn't the flu.

But 'I just know'-ing was different from really knowing. Really, Buffy reminded herself as she splashed water on her face and touched up her makeup, she didn't know anything yet. She couldn't know anything yet. She wouldn't even be late until Saturday. She just had to not think about it, that was all. 

Today wasn't about her, Buffy reasoned with herself as she resumed her walk down the hall. Today was about Giles, visiting him in the hospital. At last. Seeing with her own eyes that he was getting better and going to be okay. At last. This was no time to think about things that might or might not even really be happening. It was certainly no time to think about the feelings she felt and Giles almost certainly didn't.

Buffy put on what she hoped was a confident smile as she entered Giles’ room. With a mixture of disappointment and relief, she realized they weren't going to get the chance to talk much about their feelings or about that other thing one way or the other. 

“Hey,” she said by way of general greeting.

“Hey there, Buff,” said Xander cheerfully, “Check out the new and improved Giles. It's a good thing your mom waited until now to let you off the leash, thus sparing you the fairly barfworthy sight of this guy with tubes sticking out of his nose.”

Giles sat up a little against his pillows. His mouth looked annoyed, but his eyes were smiling. “Hello, Buffy,” he said, “I'm so glad to see you,” then, seeming suddenly embarrassed he added, “...erm, looking so well. 

"Is this really necessary?” he complained agitatedly a scant moment later as a sour old nurse checked his vital signs for what his reaction suggested must have been the billionth time.

“Yes,” the nurse snarled.

“I don’t see why such a fuss has the be made,” Giles snarled right back at her, “just because of—”

“— double pneumonia and a massive concussion?” Buffy chirped with acidic mock cheerfulness.

“Neither of which I have any more,” Giles insisted.

“You still have the cracked skull,” The nurse reminded him gloomily as she went on about her work.

“So, Buffy,” Xander asked when the nurse finally left, “is your mom around?”

“No,” Buffy informed him, “she actually let me come on my own. She just listened to a new book on tape called ‘Sharing Earned Trust With Your Troubled Teen,’ or something like that.”

“Ah,” said Xander, “God bless good old fashioned fad parenting.”

“As long as she doesn’t pick up anything with the words ‘tough love’ in the title,” Buffy confirmed, “we’re all kinds of good. I mean, there’s all these hoops I have to jump through with charts and check boxes and everything, but all it really boils down to is doing my homework on time and being there when my Mom get’s home at 5:30. 

"It doesn’t even really interfere with my patrols that much,” she added, covering guiltily, “because she’s usually asleep by 10:00 anyway. Honestly, I thought things would be way worse for way longer.

“I think talking to the new lawyer has calmed her down a lot too.” Buffy added, “He thinks he can work things so that I can finish my probation or whatever and get it expunged before I have to apply to colleges, if I, you know, want to go to college.” 

Now it was Buffy's turn to be suddenly embarrassed, not that she was a hundred percent for sure exactly why. Maybe it was the fact that she was more or less lying to them, about patrolling especially, but she honestly didn't think she could be expected to do anything else under the circumstances.

“Yes, well,” said Giles, “just be certain to avoid the police on these late night patrols. You are still under court supervision you know.”

“Ugg,” said Buffy, “How could I forget! If Mom ever goes a day without mentioning it, Snyder finds a way to remind me. This morning he told me he felt safer having the Sadie Hawkins Dance on Friday knowing that they wouldn’t have to accommodate quote, ‘whatever fugitive from justice,’ unquote, I might have asked.”

“Ah yes,” said Giles disdainfully, “That’s Snyder to the toes. I will be glad to get out of here, of course, but I can’t say I’m looking forwards to dealing with him again.”

“Well, he’s not happy with you either,” Xander pointed out. “I heard him talking to Mr. Beach yesterday. He said that the next teacher that gets killed or injured at Sunnydale High is getting a letter of reprimand in his file.”

“Well, that’s brilliant,” Giles seethed, “Ought to put a right stop to it(!)” Xander swallowed a laugh. Sarcasm not withstanding, the old guy was clearly not in a joking mood. Xander didn’t know if it was getting hit on the head yet again, or the knowledge that he had almost died or just the fact of being cooped up for a week or what, but Giles seemed, if possible, even more uptight than usual.

Strangely, despite the fact that he had worried aloud about her every day for a week and should have been glad to see her, his uptightness seemed to be somehow related to Buffy. He had seemed to become suddenly extra strained and irritable the moment she had walked in the door even though he hadn't seemed at all to be in any way irritated with her just, sort of... twitchy.

“So,” said Xander, deciding that radical action was needed to lighten the mood, “Buffy, now that Giles is all awake and sane and able to speak up for himself, and now that your finally here to do the same, I’ve been dying to ask you two about something.”

“Which is?” asked Buffy apprehensively. Giles face and shoulders tensed like a trap ready to snap shut.

Xander had an uneasy feeling that he might be making things worse instead of better, but he was already too enamored of the idea of his joke to give it up. “How exactly did your bra get in Giles’ car in the first place?” he asked, totally casually.

“What the devil—!?” Giles began, sitting bolt straight in bed and almost getting to his feet before remembering he didn’t really have that much on in the way of clothing. He turned so bright red in the face that you could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.

Buffy was also red in the face, blushing, to be exact. “How did my...?” she looked dizzily from one man to the other. Both were expecting an explanation from her with varying degrees of intensity. 

“You know...” she said “that’s really a funny story actually... You see,” she explained to Giles, trying without much success to force a laugh, “Xander found my bra in your car after the wreck and used it to tie a bandage around your head.”

Giles was aghast, “You mean you brought me in here with...with—!”

“No, no,” Xander clarified, “Buffy made me take it off in the van. We used my belt instead. But what _I_ can’t figure out is, how'd it get there in the first place?”

“Well...” Giles rambled nervously, “as Buffy says, it’s really... really a very, very... erm funny story...” 

Giles' reaction was so comical that Xander had trouble keeping even a semi-straight face. He looked as if he actually expected to be accused to doin’ it with Buffy in the back of his crappy old car. In fact Xander was tempted to suggest exactly that, but he was afraid Giles might actually have stroke or a spell or something.

“Yes...” said Buffy, acting almost as nervous for some reason, still blushing so much that Xander was starting to wonder if maybe she had borrowed Giles' car and done something with someone else, “funny story. You know... you tell it so much better than I do.”

For a moment Giles looked at Buffy as though he could have murdered her right then and there, then he softened his look to just plain put-upon resignation and acknowledged, “Well, I suppose I am the uh... the better story teller... as it were. 

"Well let’s see, this would have had to have been before... before the police... Oh, yes! Buffy was injured, you see, and she had used the... uh... thing to tie the um... sweater... thing as a sort of a bandage around her... her leg, not unlike what you did, you see.”

Xander waited for him to continue. It never happened. “That’s the... um... very funny story?” Xander grinned. Buffy nodded solemnly.

“Yes, erm...quite,” Giles confirmed, looking positively mortified.

“And that was the...uh...the funnier way of telling it?” Xander persisted.

“Well,” Giles nearly snarled, closing his eyes and pinching the bridged of his nose as if to ward off a headache, “I guess you had to be there.”

Xander realized Giles was rapidly surpassing mere annoyance, approaching a state of true hacked-off-ness that was not going to be the least bit funny. “Okay, okay,” said Xander, more or less apologetically, “I mean I knew it was something like that. It’s not like I really thought...”

“You know what?” said Buffy, sounding more than a little peeved herself, “I think we’ve talked enough about my bra for one day!”

“Oh, darn,” said a tall, good-looking, red-headed guy standing in the doorway. “I always miss the best conversations.” Buffy didn’t recognize him, but he strolled right on into the room and Amy Madison followed right behind him, so she figured he must be another Sunnydale student.

Buffy relaxed a little. She tried to exchange a look of sympathetic relief with Giles, but he looked hurriedly away when he saw her turn in his direction, like he was ashamed to meet her eye. Exactly like. 

“Don’t worry,” Xander was saying, standing to shake the boy's hand, looking as relieved as anyone, “It wasn’t as good as she’s making it sound.” 

Buffy's relief was already giving way to renewed turmoil. If Giles was this upset at the mere suggestion of anyone finding out how her bra had gotten in his car, how horrified was he going to be to find out he had gotten her pregnant? If he even had. 

Whatever, she couldn't think about that right now, Buffy chided herself, not in front of all of these people. She needed to be polite, do the talking thing. She turned her attention to the new guy, ready to introduce herself as soon as Xander was finished.

She really didn't think she had seen him around school at all, actually, so maybe he was a relative of Amy's? He was athletic though not beefy, like a baseball or basketball player maybe. Despite that and his deep voice, there was something hesitant, vulnerable about him. 

Buffy got the distinct impression that he was gay, although his baggy high-water khakis and oversized polo shirt certainly didn’t fit the stereotype. Everything about him screamed ‘I’m here, I’m queer, I’m not used to it.’ When Xander touched his hand, something in his pale green eyes seemed to be crying out... 

“Holy God! You’re Willow!” Buffy exclaimed, horrified.

“Shush! No! I’m Willard,” Willard hissed.

“Yeeh!” said Xander, jumping back about a foot.

“Xander,” said Willard, gently exacerbated, “It’s not contagious,”

“Good Lord!” said Giles, “You mean you gi—er...kids actually...”

“Uh-huh,” Amy beamed proudly.

“See, Willow’s mom is being pretty much a you-know-what and won’t let her anywhere near you guys...” Willard started to explain.

“You mean to tell me,” Giles interrupted incredulously, “You did this to yourself merely to... to sneak out... and... and”

“See you in the hospital, since I won’t see you at school ever again,” Willard pouted.

Giles looked torn. “I’m touched by your... concern for me,” he said, “really I am. But magic is powerful. It’s dangerous. It’s not something one plays around with.”

“Well” said Amy haughtily, “It’s not playing around if you know what you’re doing.”

“Humph,” Giles snorted, “Am I to understand that you imagine yourself some kind of expert on the subject!?!” He was getting loud andundeniably angry, rapidly loosing all patience. Xander hoped it wasn't some kind of delayed reaction to the whole Buffy's bra thing. Could the man not take a joke at all?

“Excuse, you!” Willard was saying in a way that was oddly Cordeliaesque for someone who was both a guy and Willow, “Rude much?! We did this for _you_! And anyway, Amy really does know what she’s doing, and she’s smart and funny, and she could really help with the, you know, Scooby type stuff if you guys would just give her a chance! And, and this way... I can still go out after six o’clock, which is a good thing 'cause you know, it doesn't seem like the world ever needs that much saving in the daytime, does it?”

“Three weeks ago,” Giles pointed out thinly, with a dismissive wave in Xander’s direction, “she had the three of you (and every other woman in town) falling at _his_ feet.”

“Hey!” said Xander. He didn’t really have anything to follow that up with, because the statement was completely true, he just didn’t like being referred to that way.

“Okay, look,” Buffy said sharply, “could everyone please just stop snapping at each other! I mean, we’re all here and alive, and several times in recent memory we have all had chances to not be either of those things, and if we’re going to stand here and list all of the wrong or stupid or dangerous things everyone has done in the last three months and try to figure out who’s fault they all were, we could literally be here all night without having any fun whatsoever, so could we please just maybe give it a rest and try to enjoy one another’s present, not-dead company?!”

As the sound of Buffy’s voice died away, she felt herself flushing with renewed embarrassment under the wide eyes of every other person in the room. Her rambling speech had left them all speechless, and apparently abashed. The ringing silence was soon replaced by a general murmur of apology and forgiveness. 

Buffy smiled a little sheepishly as Xander offered to crown her Queen of All Rantors and the others murmured their assent, though the noise Giles made sounded more disgruntled and noncommittal than anything. 

“Actually,” he said, without much of a segue, “why don’t all of you... erm children run along. I'm feeling very tired, and if I’m to be... released from this... place in the morning, I need to get some rest.”

“Okay,” said Willard brow furrowed unpleasantly, “Buffy, why don’t Amy and I give you a ride home. We wanted to ask you about some... uh,” he laughed nervously and shot Giles a not-at-all laughing look, “girl stuff.” 

Buffy's eyes widened. She looked at Giles, waiting for him to say that his terse, 'run along children' had not, of course, included her, that he himself wanted to speak with her about what clearly so very much concerned him. 

He hesitated, mouth partly open, looking pained, but she couldn't tell if he really had nothing to say beyond leave and stop bothering me, or if he was unable to speak, or if he just wasn't sure what to say in front of all of these people either.

“Okay, ‘girls’,” Xander was saying, in a tone of voice that eliminated the need for finger quote marks, “I’ll see you around.” Buffy was starting to panic. Why wasn't Giles saying anything. She didn’t have any trouble imagining what kind of ‘girl stuff’ Willard wanted to ask her about, and neither should he. 

She’d just have to play dumb, she decided, tell them thanks for the offer, but she had other places to go before curfew. Surely Willard wouldn’t press the point in front of Amy if Buffy clearly hinted that she still didn’t want her to know anything about it. But shouldn't Giles be just as worried?

“Buffy,” Giles managed to croak hoarsely, finding his tongue at last, “stay a moment, won't you? We have...” he still failed to meet Buffy's eye, but shot a pointed look at Willard, “a thing or two to discuss.” 

_Amy_ looked as though she might be about to say something in response to that, but Willard shushed her with a look and all but pushed her out the door, Xander following close behind.

Trembling, Buffy closed the door and turned to face Giles, favoring him with a weak smile. “Hi?” she said miserably.

He smiled back at her with big sad eyes. “How've you been?” he asked.

Buffy examined her cuticles. The usual 'fine' stuck in her throat. “Sick and tired,” she groaned instead. It sounded halfway like an apology, even in her own ears. “Way more than you get from the flu,” she added, forcing herself to look up and meet his eyes at last. 

Or at least, their eyes would have met, if he hadn't been cleaning his glasses so intently. “Waiting for me to say something more interesting?” she tried to joke. Giles made a very unpleased, unpleasant face, looking up at last, his hand stilled in mid-polish. Her words hung in the air, sounding harsh.

“Have you taken a test?” he asked quietly, his voice controlled, businesslike.

“No,” Buffy admitted, locking eyes with him at last, trying to sound just as cool, just as professional. “I'm not even late for four more days.”

“Well, I don't know that I would wait for that,” Giles advised her. “You see,” he added, lapsing into a scholarly, lecturing tone as he resumed buffing his already very clean lenses with his handkerchief. “I've been doing a little reading in certain of the Watcher Diaries (which Xander was kind enough to fetch for me, for what purpose he knew not, of course) particularly those of a Mr. Crowley....”

“Giles, what?” Buffy interrupted him, suddenly impatient. “I'm a big girl, remember? Whatever it is, just tell me.” Whatever he was beating around the bush about, it was clearly nothing along the lines of 'I love you and everything will be alright.'

Giles looked acutely uncomfortable and maybe just a little disapproving, but he continued, his tone a little shakier, a little less scholarly. “Buffy, of course you know that as the Slayer, you have the power to heal very quickly, but what you may not realize is that that process requires not only a very rapid and efficient metabolism of nutrients, but also an accelerated process of cell division. It seems that, whenever previous Slayers have become pregnant, that... condition has tended to progress more rapidly than in a normal human female, particularly in the early stages in which normal pregnancy related chemical signals calling for rapid cell growth can become confused with chemicals that signal the _Slayer's_ body specifically to accelerate the regrowth of damaged tissues.”

“Oh,” Buffy said quietly, “that's not good.”

 *****

“Well, that was a bust,” Willard grumbled as they made their way through the hospital parking lot to his mother's technically not so much borrowed as stolen car. He had more thoughts about what had just happen, but thankfully none Amy was pushing him to share. He appreciated that about her, how well she knew him, how comfortable she could make him feel. 

It was so much easier to talk to a girl than a guy, even when she was as beautiful and amazing as Amy. Whoa! Hey! Where had that thought come from? Willard almost laughed. Because he _knew_ where that thought came from, knew the literal, physical location of it. Which was just a lot more obvious, when you happened to be a guy.

He offered to drive Amy home, figuring as soon as he was unWillard, he could call Oz and invite him to come over for a couple of hours before he had to wake Sheila up. But Amy had different ideas. “We can’t go home now,” she pointed out. “I mean, we went to a lot of trouble to set up this spell. If we don’t even stay out after six o’clock, what’s the point?”

“Well,” said Willard, not wanting disappoint Amy, figuring Oz could wait another hour or so, “we could go to the Bronze, but... I’m not really dressed for it.” He was working up to suggesting a more casual (and probably much shorter) visit to the Espresso Pump, when Amy met his objection head on.

“No problem,” she declared, pulling a black leather handbag from under the passenger seat, “Look what I found!” Sheila’s purse, Willard realized. Amy rifled through it and quickly came up with a couple of credit cards. “I think,” she said enticingly, “that a whole new man deserves a whole new wardrobe.”

“Oh, I don’t know Amy...” Willard started to say, he guessed he could put Sheila under again tomorrow evening and invite Oz over then, when they would have more time anyway.

“Come on...” Amy cajoled, shoving the credit cards into his pockets, “...You know you want to!”

Willard laughed, nervously at first, then slowly broke out in a grin from ear to ear. “But, Amy, we might get in trouble!” he all but sang, ironically.

“Now that’s the spirit!” Amy grinned back.

“Say!” said Willard, “I think I’m a juvenile delinquent!”

“Yeah, ya are!” said Amy encouragingly.

Willard’s grin got wider and goofier as she draped an arm around his shoulders and just let it hang there, casually. “So far,” he said, “I think I like it.”

 *****

Watching Buffy walk out of his room felt like watching her walk out of his life. He wanted to grab her, stop her, kiss her, keep her forever. But she was not walking out of his life. He would see her again in a day or two and almost every day thereafter. Until one day he wouldn’t. And every day, until that day, he would continue to make the same hard, painful choice, over and over again. Every day, he had to let her go. 

And every day she would hate him for it. And for the children she would never have, who would never have seemed so real and immediate, nor so _permanent_ a loss, had he not drawn her attention to their absence in the cruelest manner imaginable. Without his bungling interference in her life, she would merely have died young without ever having to understand that someday never comes.

“God have mercy on a miserable sinner,” Giles murmured, closing his eyes and lying back on his pillows. He wondered how many days of this torment he could endure before it literally killed him. 

Experience suggested that, despite a deep gut feeling to the contrary, the true answer was probably an infinite number. Experience also tended to suggest that his feelings for Buffy would fade slowly over time, eventually amounting to nothing more than an occasional stab of regret. Once again, a feeling in his twisted, knotted guts said otherwise.

He took a deep breath and let it out again, trying to send some of his anguish and confusion with it. When, only a week and a half ago, he and Buffy had confessed their lack of romantic love for one another, he’d thought she meant it, and he’d tried very hard to mean it too. 

Though there had been no denying that something had lingered between them in the days that followed, it had seemed like something that would pass. It was infinitely less important than the problem of Buffy's fertility. 

But today, finally seeing Buffy for the first time since the crash... somehow, everything had changed. When he looked into Buffy’s eyes, he felt sure that things had changed for her as well. Well, _almost_ sure. What he was not sure about at all was how to get everything back, as near as possible, to the way it should have been.

“Why so glum, Chum,” asked Dr. Heigle cheerfully poking his head through the door.

Giles smiled ruefully, _Sadly, I love a woman._ Or at any rate, aim reasonably near. “Wallowing in a morass of my own making,” he said aloud. “How are you?”

“Basking in the light of love and life as usual,” the doctor responded without looking up from Giles’ chart. He seemed like he meant it too.

“Must be nice,” Giles mused.

“Well,” said the doctor, finally looking up, “at least you’re going home tomorrow. Do you want me to release you to work or keep you off through the end of the week?”

Giles sighed. “I’m tempted,” he admitted, “but I’m sure I’m behind enough as it is. Let’s see... tomorrow’s Wednesday, I’d better start back Thursday if you think it would be alright.”

“Suit yourself,” said the doctor. But Rupert Giles had given up that dream a very long time ago.

 *****

Buffy spent nearly half an hour poking around in the hospital's gift shop/convenience store, but at last there was no avoiding it. It was nearly five o'clock. She needed to get whatever she was going to get and go. 

Pouting just a little, she picked up one of each of the stores two brands of pregnancy test kits and started comparing the labels. Both promised 99% accurate results. Both promised results ‘five days sooner’. Neither seemed to mean that you could get both of those things at the same time, but it seemed like you might have to look inside the boxes to get the goods on what they really meant.

When Buffy got ready to check out a nurse came and stood in line behind her, buying a pack of gum. She was a sour looking, dough-faced woman of sixty in a traditional white uniform with her hair in a tight bun under her old-fashioned white cap. To say that she gave Buffy a disapproving look would be the height of ironic understatement. It was more a look of scandalized personal betrayal. 

Buffy guessed she'd be really shocked if she knew who the potential father-to-be actually was. As it was, Buffy felt like she was going to die of shame from the look this woman was giving her, but she didn't dare leave without buying the test kit. With today’s news, knowing as soon as possible what to expect was no longer optional. The truth had too many consequences. It was too important.

 *****

It was dark in Quentin Travers’ study where ancient velvet drapes closed out the always illuminated London sky. The light of the single green-shaded desk lamp fell across a small sheaf of papers. Rupert Giles’ Official Reports from the Hellmouth. 

There was nothing in them that was inconsistent with what his own sources were telling him. But even by the standards of the Watchers’ Council they were circumspect, withholding detail and arguably understating the Slayer’s personal misconduct and the legal consequences thereof. Reading between the lines, knowing the man in question, the terse accounts spoke volumes. 

Rupert Giles was no Watcher. The Council should have accepted his resignation when he’d offer it nearly six years ago. They should have left him to die in the gutter in London twenty years before that.

But he was Andrew Giles’ son.

Technically, the elder Mr. Giles did not out rank Mr. Travers. Each of them was one of the Seven Equals who made up the Inner Council. But Andrew Giles would always be First Among Equals, and Quentin Travers could never be quite as equal as he. 

To make a move against the younger Mr. Giles, he would need more than unpleasant circumstances and uncharitable insinuations. He would need positive proof of misconduct. Perversely, he wished the worst would finally happen, he truly did. Then the both of these embarrassments to the Council could be dealt with.

While Buffy Summers was, by all accounts, a talented Slayer, she was beyond undisciplined. She was a law unto herself. Unfathomably, it was this very quality that had convinced some in the Council that Rupert Giles would be her perfect guide and teacher. If you want to keep a wild child on the straight and narrow, so the logic seemed to run, send someone who has looked over the edge into the abyss of chaos and come back a sadder and a wiser man.

It was rubbish of course. Quentin had said so at the time. Rupert Giles was the same as he had ever been, man and boy. It was the Council who would be sadder, if no wiser, for having trusted him again.

 *****

The Summers family ate in their usual awkward silence punctuated by even more awkward attempts by Joyce to start a conversation. The main difference was that instead of barely choking down a few bites, Buffy was shoveling it in as quickly as possible. It seemed like knowing, or at least having a pretty good idea, of why she'd felt like she was starving for the last week and a half just made Buffy that much hungrier. At least eating at a near competitive pace gave her an excuse for not saying much of anything.

The thing was, she wanted to talk to her mother, but there was nothing in her life, nothing that mattered, that she could talk to her about. It seemed farcical to discuss her homework or adding extracurricular activities or any of the other things her mother tried to bring up, when she might just as easily be dead tomorrow, when she might be pregnant right now. 

If she said a single word about vampires, she would get that look. The I-wonder-if-they-have-a-bed-available-at-the-Carsters-Clinic-if-I-call-right-now-and-God-I-hope-this-will-just-go-away-before-I-have-to-do-that look. If she said a word about her murdering fugitive ex-boyfriend without mentioning vampires, the conversation would have to be fictionalized to the point of meaninglessness. 

She couldn’t even _mention_ her current romantic dilemma, and she was not about to tell her mom that she was getting ready to take a home pregnancy test. “May I be excused,” she mumbled when she’d finally demolished the pot-roast. Joyce nodded, looking worried and confused.

When Buffy got up to her room, she found herself suddenly anxious to wait a little longer. She wasn't ready to know for sure that a bitsy baby Giles was growing inside her. 

She contemplated taking a nap first or maybe even waiting until morning, which she had heard was supposed to be the best time anyway. Well, but it wasn't like she'd get a lot of sleep that way, what with the wondering, the not knowing. And Buffy needed sleep desperately as she had done at no other time in her life. 

Well, she supposed at least she should read the instructions. Maybe they would _say_ to wait until morning.

She opened her trunk and lifted out the false bottom. There among the stakes and charms and little vials of holy water lay a white pharmacy sack, the shape of a box visible inside. 

According to the card inside the box, there was no need to wait. She could know the truth within five minutes. Two blue lines would mean 9999 out of a ten thousand that she was pregnant; only one, almost 9 out of 10 she was not. But those numbers were for a normal girl. Buffy would be ahead of her time, which raised the odds that one not-pregant line actually meant what it said to well over 99%. The meaning of two lines remained exactly the same.

Buffy started to feel panicked. Her first instinct was to call Willow. There were at least three good reasons why that couldn’t happen right now. Her next impulse was to call Xander, but there was no good there. Cordelia? Somehow, despite the recent thaw in their little cold war, she thought not. This was not the kind of secret with which a girl like Cordelia could be trusted. 

For a split second, she tried to imagine having a conversation with Kendra about this. She didn’t see that going very well, not that it mattered since she didn’t know how to get a hold of Kendra without going through her Watcher, Mr. Zabuto. There was something about Amy that inspired Buffy not to trust her even a little bit, which pretty much exhausted the list of girls who might actually be willing to talk to Buffy ever, about anything, so she decided to quit being a baby and just take the darned test already.

The instructions said to lay the thing on the counter when you were done and come back to look at it in five minutes, but that seemed like an accident waiting to happen. Instead, she sat and held it, watching the lines develop like an abstract version of a Polaroid. She had to consciously resist the temptation to shake it to make it go faster. 

When the first line was fully formed and the first ambiguous hint of a second began to appear, Buffy felt something so shocking she almost dropped the test stick on the floor. Her dominant emotion at the instant that her fate was about to become clear had been not fear, but hope! Buffy suddenly realized that she _wanted_ to be pregnant... at least, for the ten seconds it took her to realize that she actually _was_ pregnant, which was something else again.

There was definitely a healthy dose of fear now, but the main thing she felt was relief. First of all, the ‘worst’ had happened and the world showed no sign of coming to an end because of it. Turning upside down maybe, but not coming to an end. 

On top of that, Buffy had an odd realization. If she had a child, at last there would be something _real_ , something that _mattered_ in her life besides what she had been chosen to do, something she had chosen. For the first time in a long time, her future, or at least the most important part of it, was entirely in her hands.

‘No fate but what we make,’ she thought, amused at herself. Melodramatic much? But the truth was, there wasn’t much over stating the importance of the choice that fate had dropped in her lap. She could, if she wanted to, bring to life an entirely new individual human person. 

In a way, she’d be choosing the past, as well as the future. The difference between making love and making a mistake was hers to determine. Her child, Giles’ child, would be the product of their love, the proof, the validation of it. And it would be true, forever.

“Life is short,” Buffy said aloud, though she had not been conscious of thinking anything along those lines. And just like that, Buffy knew. She had decided, and the armies of hell could not have dissuaded her. She was having a baby!

 *****

“A boy?” Cordelia asked incredulously, leaning across the tiny round table to be closer to the source of this incredible news, “Amy turned Willow into a boy? A _real_ boy?”

“No,” said Xander sarcastically, beginning to be sorry he’d ever brought up the subject of Willow’s transformation, “She's a wooden puppet(!) Yes, a real boy!”

“Well, I was just asking!” Cordelia retorted, “God!”

“Well don't?” he said, testily. “The whole thing just kind of creeped me out.”

“Well you're the one who brought it up!” she reminded him hotly.

“Anyway,” Xander deflected, “The point is, it’s not natural. Somebody has to tell Amy to cool it with this magic stuff before people start to really get hurt.”

“Says the voice of recent experience,” Cordelia pointed out.

“Yeah, well, I’ve learned my lesson, and she should too,” said Xander, still agitated.

“Well,” said Cordelia, suddenly, cruelly amused, “now’s your chance to tell her.” With a sinking heart and a rising stomach, he followed her gaze. Walking into the Bronze, arm-in-arm, looking like they’d just stepped out of the pages of Redbook and GQ respectively, were Amy and Willard. “Where do you think they got those clothes?” Cordelia wondered aloud.

“Of course, _that’s_ the burning issue of the evening,” said Xander sarcastically. 

He was on the verge of suggesting a hasty retreat when Willard beat him to the punch. The minute his eyes fell on their table, he took a step backwards, dragging Amy with him. Shaking his head and whispering frantically, he pulled her into the alcove by the bathrooms, out of sight.

“Oh My God,” said Cordelia, “I guess that answers that question.”

“What?” said Xander.

“Oh Please,” said Cordelia, “he didn’t drag her in there to swap magic potion recipes.”

“No, that’s not it,” Xander argued, “they’re avoiding us.”

“Why would they do that?” Cordelia asked with palpable skepticism.

“Because...” Xander tried to explain, sensing that he was on dangerous ground, “Willard’s a guy... and I’m a guy... and we’re both two guys... but he’s still Willow and I’m still me and ... I don’t know what that adds up to for her... or him... but to me it adds up to let’s get out of here and go hit Ben and Jerry’s. Come on, you and me, right now, my treat.”

“Oh my God,” said Cordelia, simultaneously amused and offended as only she could be. “You actually think Willow is still secretly pining over you, don’t you?”

“Well... yeah?” Xander admitted sure he had just sprung some kind of a trap.

“And she’s what... toying with Oz just to make you jealous?”

“No... I don’t think that... it’s just... I’m not available... so she’s just... you know...”

“Settling(!)” Cordelia concluded incredulously, “for a cool, laconic musician who’s read almost as much she has, totally gets everything she says, and thinks she makes the world spin on its axis?”

“Yeah?”

“Open your eyes, Xander. Willow is in love with Oz. She’s totally over you. And she’s probably in the bathroom right now making out with Amy Madison. You’ve got even less of a shot with her than you have with Buffy. The only girl pining for your undivided attention is me! Me, Xander! And right now I have no idea why!”


	2. True North

After dinner with Buffy, Joyce had been so exhausted, so frustrated, so worn down by life that she’d wanted go straight to bed. But she couldn’t. She had to load the dishwasher, start the laundry going, and make out her bills to mail tomorrow. And it was trash day. By the time she’d waded through everything else and got down to the trash, it was nearly nine o’clock. For the eighth night in a row, Buffy’s light was out before her mother’s. Joyce supposed she was feeling run down by life as well.

Buffy’s bathroom trash can seemed oddly full. Inwardly scolding herself for being paranoid, Joyce pulled the transparent liner out and examined its contents. Stuffed in the bottom was a white paper sack that to Joyce said ‘pharmacy.’ Buffy didn’t have any legitimate prescriptions. Of course, there were other things you could get from a pharmacy, but under the circumstances, she felt she had to look in that bag.

Inside, she found one of the other things you could get at a pharmacy. Two blue lines were clearly visible on the test strip. The included instructions confirmed that this was a positive result. Of course, they could have been evaporation lines. Couldn't they? Maybe they could be, but she knew that they weren't. Buffy was pregnant.

Things started to fall into place in Joyce’s mind. She wished they would stop. No wonder Buffy had gone to bed exhausted right after dinner again. No wonder she had been trying to forge a secret prescription on a Saturday night instead of just talking to her mother about getting on the Pill. The way Buffy had said she’d been dating Angel ‘a while back,’ Joyce had thought she was talking about something that had happened weeks earlier. She guessed days could seem like weeks at seventeen.

Angel had killed one of Buffy’s teacher’s, the girlfriend of her unofficial mentor, just hours after she had told him in two languages and in no uncertain terms that he was unwelcome in her house. Less than 24 hours later, he had killed her best friend’s father and kidnapped her, or at least taken off with her under some degree of duress. That had been the entire point of his murderous crime spree! To terrorize her into going back to him! If Angel learned that Buffy was pregnant, there was no telling what he might do.

Joyce sat for a long while on the edge of the bathtub holding her head in her hands. Her first impulse, when life with Buffy was more than she could handle,was still, as always, to run to Hank. She knew better. She went down stairs and dialed the _other_ number she never had to look up, the one person she knew she could trust, and who might be able to help her.

 *****

“Will you relax,” Amy chided, trying to drag Willard out of the alcove.

“I can’t,” Willard hissed, “I mean the hospital was bad enough, but this? It’s just you and me and him and Cordelia and ... and... and... and...they’re gonna _know_!”

“They’re _not_ gonna know,” Amy assured him, straightening his collar and brushing lent off the front of his shirt, not bothering to pretend she didn't know what Willard was afraid of Xander, or anyone else knowing. Suddenly, his heart was pounding for an altogether different reason. He was all but sure she knew what she was doing when she leaned into him, both hands on his chest, and whispered directly into his ear, “just one dance, then if you still want to... we can go.”

They stayed for more than one dance. They closed down the club, long after Xander and Cordelia were gone. Somehow, when Amy passed someone an ID, it magically passed inspection, and having a credible credit card was like a kind of magic all its own. 

But the best part was the way Amy held him when they danced together, the way she kissed him, the way she looked into his eyes. By the time Willard floated into the parking lot at two am, his beautiful girl on his arm, he felt ten feet tall.

But, then, suddenly, there it was, slamming him rudely back to Earth. Sheila Rosenberg’s car waited like a pumpkin coach to take him home to Willow’s thoroughly messed up life and everything that went with it. 

Not yet realizing the shift that had occurred, still high on the feeling that had been growing between them all night, drunk with passion in fact, Amy threw her arms around Willard and kissed him hard on the lips. The two of them stumbled against the Lexis. 

Despite a wave of inner turmoil, he kissed her back. The kiss deepened. He could smell Amy's hair. He wanted to keep kissing her, he really did. But it was no good.

“Amy,” he said apologetically, setting her back on her feet, “we can’t.”

“Sure we can,” she cajoled, “we can do whatever we want.”

“But...Oz...”

“...will never know.”

“But I’ll know,” Willard pointed out.

Amy sighed, folded her arms and walked around to the passenger side to get in. “So much for being above the law,” she muttered. 

Willard sighed too in his horse snorting way. He might not be entirely sure who he was or who he wanted to be with, but he knew who mattered most to him, and it wasn’t Xander or Amy or Buffy and it certainly wasn’t Sheila Rosenberg. He couldn’t wait to get home, break Amy’s spell and be a girl again. The girl Oz loved.

*****

Drusilla smiled in the dark, sniffing the foul air. “Here we are dears,” she said silkily, “home sweet home.” 

The large bundle cradled in her arms shivered with something that was definitely not joy. She gently swung the curled up creature from side to side, shushing it lovingly, like a fussy baby. 

None of the small band of vampires could see one another in the total darkness of that buried chamber, but they were acutely aware of one another by sound and smell. They could hear one another’s trembling bones and chattering teeth. They could smell one another’s fear. 

A pace behind Drusilla, at her right hand, Spike leaned on an iron stave he’d brought along for support and protection. He’d been up and about for nearly a week, but was not yet altogether steady on his feet or sure of his strength. 

“Are you sure this is where you want to be, pet?” he asked, the voice for all those who lacked Drusilla’s leave to be so bold.

“Yeah,” she said with relish. “There’s power here. I like the way it sings in my head.” Besides Drusilla, none of them liked the power they felt in this place. Edwards, who had actually made his home here once before, liked it even less. 

Closing his eyes and opening his mind to the space around him, he set his trussed and squirming captive on the floor and walked to the nearest of the massive standing candelabras to light it, praying to he-knew-not-what to avoid stumbling over a cross in the darkness. The candles’ dim illumination filled the place with light and shadows. It revealed a tumbled maze of moldering oak and cracked marble. It danced eerily on the stagnant waters of the baptismal pool.

This place had changed little in the sixty-odd years since he’d first lain eye on it, but Edwards had changed a lot. Standing among the elite of the Master’s growing legions, his awe and terror of this hostile, sacred place had been mingled with glad anticipation of imminent triumph over it and the world. He had had courage then, confidence, clarity of purpose. He had been able, as Spike was now, to put on a human face and a convincing bluff of relaxation. 

Now, he cowered behind his demonic features in perpetual anticipation of attack, like the weak ones he had sneered at back then. All his grand ambitions were gone. His only goal was to keep his head above the waters of oblivion, to continue to exist another year, another day, another hour.

A quick survey of his companions, using all three long range senses, told him that he was easily in the majority in this position. And no wonder. At the height of Spike’s reign, only ten weeks ago, their numbers had swelled to nearly fifty, their greatest strength since the death of the Master. Now they were only seven, even if you counted Angel, which seemed dubious at best. 

If Edwards were to be honest with himself, he would have to admit that his girl Zanya was almost as badly off. She sat huddled in Spike’s old wheelchair, staring vacantly into space with her one remaining eye, muttering to herself in what he could only assume was the language of her long forgotten African childhood. She was so badly burned that he could not even tell her demon face from her human form without looking at her teeth.

The troop was rounded out by a pair of Angel’s recent spawn. The two scrawny, wet-behind-the-ears females were called Kim and Keri. Shivering in their short shorts and tank tops, fangs bared defensively, they looked like refugees from the Cheer Camp of the Damned. They could have been body doubles for the Slayer. 

Kim and Keri hadn’t been considered skilled enough to join the raiding party at the cemetery. Now they were making themselves useful by pushing two large shopping carts, each filled with three five gallon water bottles. It was real, honest to God spring water. Ancient. Clean. None of that reverse osmosis crap. It would serve for what they needed. Or at least, for what they had decided to do.

Not for the first time, it occurred to Edwards that his goal of self-preservation might be better served by abandoning his companions. After all, _he_ wasn’t the one who’d gone to such great lengths to make a personal enemy of the Slayer. 

But that would mean leaving Zanya. She had been with him three hundred years one way and another. She was the last thing on this Earth that he felt was truly his, the last connection between the vampire that he was and the man he had once been. So, here he would stay, cowering in this God infested place, serving the whims of a raving lunatic, praying to he-knew-not-what to let him just exist another day.

*****

_The church was above ground, brightly lit, clean and in good repair. Buffy recognized it anyway. Once again she was dressed in white. Everyone loved her dress._

_Her father, Hank Summers, was at her side, smiling and laughing, talking on his cell phone. Giles stood at the front of the church, next to the altar, beaming back down the aisle at her. The music started and at last she began walking towards her destiny._

_But then the bundle of flowers in her arms began to cry. Though she did everything she could to sooth the infant, it kept right on wailing loudly, all the way up the aisle. There was a murmur of disapproval from absolutely everyone. Even Spike and Drusilla were shaking their heads. Jenny Calendar looked absolutely furious in that hard, quiet Gypsy-eyes-boring-into-your-head sort of way. Giles put his finger to his lips, looking particularly disappointed in her. Hank apologized to everyone on his conference call for his daughter’s rudeness._

“ _Honestly,” Buffy heard Mrs. Harris saying to her son in a loud stage whisper, “I don’t know what you ever saw her.”_

“ _Well that’s no secret!” Her husband roared with laughter, leering drunkenly at Buffy._

“ _That Bunny Summers will be the death of me!” Sheila interjected._

“ _Well, this is what happens, when you let the children tell the parents what to do,” Ted was saying to Joyce as they passed the front row._

“ _I’m sure that’s right, honey.” Joyce agreed happily._

_At last, they reached the front of the church. But the flowers just wouldn't stop crying. Buffy tried to hand them to Cordelia, her maid of honor. “Oh please!” the queen bee said disdainfully, folding her arms._

“ _Don't look at me,” Willow piped up from where she was sitting between Oz and Amy, “She's the one you wanted up there. Besides,” she looked from one to the other of her companions, “I have my own problems.”_

_Finally, Giles seemed to take pity on Buffy. “Here,” he said, taking the flowers and tossing them casually in the trash. The noise stopped immediately. “Now then,” he said, “isn't that better?”_

_Buffy shook her head, wanting desperately to object, unable to find her voice to speak. But no words from her were needed. Giles and Hank nodded the terms of some unspoken agreement. Each keeping a firm grip on one hand and arm, they supported her upright to the altar and gently laid her down on it. Hank handed Giles a Gothic looking sword, the kind where the hilt makes a giant cross, and stepped to one side to continue his phone conversation. Giles held the sword aloft, poised above Buffy’s swollen abdomen. “This is the way men and women have behaved for centuries,” he explained, his tone only mildly apologetic. “I'll tell you when you're ready.”_

“ _Who has the ring?” the Mayor asked from the pulpit. Buffy held up her fist to show him that she was already wearing it, with the heart pointed towards her, her ring finger turning from purple to black as the metal band grew ever tighter, biting into her flesh._

“ _Then if none here knows of any just cause—” the Mayor continued._

“ _Stop!”Angel demanded, standing and advancing down the aisle. For a moment, Buffy's heart leapt with hope and relief and joy; but no, he was not there to save her. “A person just doesn’t wake up one day and stop loving somebody!” Angel wailed, cocking his gun and training it on Buffy’s heart. “Love is forever!”_

Buffy didn’t know if her alarm clock actually woke her or just happened to go off at the exact moment that her nightmares startled her from sleep. How could it be 7:00? That would mean she had slept for nearly twelve hours. Was that normal? Well, maybe it was, for a given value of 'normal'. But if so, no wonder the Council didn’t want Slayers getting pregnant. Buffy guessed she’d have to start setting the alarm for her patrols. 

The dream itself spooked her a little, but there was nothing in it that seemed... realistic enough to be prophetic. She guessed it was just a bundle of guilt and anxiety rolling around in her mysterious brain, fretting over the tangled mess that was her life. Probably it was just because of the acutely uncomfortable space she was living in between knowing for certain that she was pregnant and having no idea how pregnant she was... or how fast things were supposed to go from here.

But clearly, that wasn't the only thing her subconscious was seriously freaking out about right now. Buffy reached into the drawer of her nightstand and pulled out Angel’s ring, still hanging on the chain by which she’d worn it in the days immediately following his transformation. The days before... She had only taken it off that night, when she had done the spell to shut him out. 

She curled the chain around her hand and let the ring dangle under her gaze. The truth was, she hadn’t stopped loving Angel, but there was no place for that love in her life now. It was a broken piece of a different puzzle, shoved in where it didn’t fit. Not that she was too sure how the rest of the pieces fit together either. 

Buffy sighed. With all the talking they had done yesterday about her theoretical pregnancy, Slayer biology, etc., she and Giles hadn't really said anything about their relationship or lack of same. A time or two she had hinted at bringing it up, but he had been so relentlessly practical, so focused and on task that she didn't know if he had been deliberately ignoring her hints or just had too many important things on his mind to notice them.

Of course, Buffy had important things on her mind too. She had demons to slay, equations to solve, and less than two hours to read enough of Romeo and Juliet to fake her way through an English quiz. She had court in a month, finals in nine weeks and a baby that was set to come in its own time like the ghost of Christmas Future. 

God! Wasn’t that honestly complicated enough! Why did she have to go and dream about Angel? How do you love a monster, a cold, dead, empty thing that can’t feel love? And if love makes someone a monster, if it hollows him out inside, then how can it still be called love?

“Alright, smart guy,” she said to the familiar, puffy-shirted gentleman on the front of her English Lit book, “why don’t you tell me something about love.” But all she found was ‘two hours traffic’ of people running around sticking swords in each other and sneaking in and out of windows, which was pretty much what Buffy called a Tuesday night. 

The one point on which ‘the Bard’ was most definite was also one on which he was wrong. One love didn’t burn another out of Buffy’s heart. One piled up on top of the other, crushing her, crippling her, as both of them endlessly burned.

*****

Per hospital policy, Giles was transported to his taxi via wheelchair, though he had been up on his feet pretty regularly for a couple of days. He’d have to do something about a car pretty soon he realized. It’d be hell trying to live in Southern California without one. 

He needed to do something about a lot of things. But there was one thing he had to do first.

“And where are we going to on this fine day that the Lord hath made?” the driver asked cheerfully.

“Pleasant Hill Cemetery,” he said levelly.

“No flowers?” the driver chided gently.

“No,” said Giles coldly, sharply. He closed his eyes against the remembered sent of rich red roses laced with vain anticipation. The joy he had felt at that moment, the sense of resolution, of recovery of love once lost.... The horror of it all was too much to bear. Reaching behind his glasses, he squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing back his tears.

“Hey man...” the driver yammered amiably, “I didn’t mean to upset you or anything... You know... what you need to do is just lift it up to the Lord.”

Giles kept his gaze focused through the window at a random object in the middle distance while he waited a moment to be calm, or calm enough. “Pleasant Hill Cemetery,” he repeated firmly as soon as he trusted himself to speak again.

They made the rest of the journey in silence, which suited Giles perfectly. It was a bit unfortunate that he had to ask the man to wait. If there was one thing he didn't need today, it was an audience, but there was nothing out this way, no telephone to call another cab.

The minute he saw Jenny’s grave, he regretted his decision to come. He had wanted to come here to feel her presence, he supposed, to reach... some kind of resolution with her. Instead he felt her absence more keenly than ever. 

He felt foolish standing there in silence, holding in his angry sadness, doing nothing whatsoever. He would have felt even more foolish raving aloud, pouring out his heart to a headstone under the watchful gaze of his unwanted companion. He wished he _had_ brought flowers. At least laying them on her grave would have given him something to do, a reason to reach down and touch the Earth that embraced Jenny as he never had and never would. 

If only there were someone here with him. Someone with whom he could share the sorrows and burdens of this retched life. Someone who would understand.

*****

“Buffy! Hey, Buffy!” Xander called a little too enthusiastically as she walked into Ms. Frank’s second period English class, “Come, Buffy, who is my very dear friend, sit next to me.” She did, smiling wryly to herself, knowing exactly what he wanted. 

Oh how comfortingly normal he was! So the same as always! She could have hugged him. But that would have spoiled the whole 'normal' thing. Besides which, she already felt too selfconscious in her suddenly too tight and therefore ever so slightly too short skirt, not to mention the cup-runneth-over thing that was happening with her bra and that her top frankly didn't do a lot to hide. 

“You did the reading, right?” Xander pressed, as predicted, “Tell me you did the reading!”

“More or less,” Buffy confirmed.

“More more or more less?” Xander asked nervously.

“I got through most of it,” she said, “I skipped the parts that were obviously supposed to be funny. Teachers never ask about the funny parts.”

“Alright, so tell me everything you can about it in...” He looked at his watch, “ninety seconds.”

“It’s Romeo and Juliet,” Buffy pointed out dryly. “You should already know everything I can tell you about it in ninety seconds.”

“So tell me everything I don’t know in ninety second,” he insisted.

Buffy sighed, “It’s more of a body count piece than you might think. Romeo’s majorly immature and also kind of a jerk. He kills Juliet’s cousin, who’s an even bigger jerk, but she still sleeps with him anyway, which is kinda gross actually, ‘cause she’s like thirteen? Then finally, after half the kids in town are dead, the grownups admit that it was all their fault in the first place.”

“Wow,” said Xander monotonally, “how romantic.”

Buffy shrugged, “That’s kinda what I thought.”

“God, I miss Willow!” Xander declared.

“Well, you could try doing your own homework,” Buffy teased.

“It’s not that,” said Xander. “It’s just... all this educational stuff seemed a little less pointless when she was around.”

“Well, at least _you_ can still see her at night if you want,” Buffy pointed out glumly.

Xander made a noise between a snort and a laugh, “You mean I can still see _him_ at night, or more accurately them, and no thanks.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Buffy asked startled by the bitterness in his voice.

“Haven’t you heard?” Xander explained, “Amy and Willard are uh... quite the hot new couple around town... dancing the night away, buying everybody drinks, driving Dr. Rosenberg’s car, sporting all the latest fashions.”

“Seriously?” said Buffy, somewhere between skepticism and downright disbelief. Then another thought bugged her. “Wait a minute,” she said, “How can they afford all that?”

“I’ve been asking myself that very question,” said Xander meaningfully.

“Oh come on, Xander,” Buffy tried to be a voice of reason, “this is Willow we’re talking about. She of the level head. I mean, there’s no way she would steal from her own—” Xander was giving Buffy the look she so richly deserved. “God! This is all my fault!” Buffy concluded. “I’m like this evil thing that turns people evil!”

“No you’re not,” said Xander softening the look. “I don’t know what you and Willow were thinking that night... and I don’t think I want to know, but this is something else. For this, I blame Amy.” 

Buffy doubted she deserved such a lenient assessment, but the way things were going lately, she took what she could get. But she was more worried about Willow than ever. She’d have liked to have discussed it more, but Ms. Frank had come in and was starting the quiz. 

One thing was for sure. She needed to have a talk with Amy about all of this, as soon as possible.

*****

“Let me get this strait,” Spike said to Edwards as the two of them emptied the baptismal pool one rusty bucket at a time, pouring the slimy, stagnant water into a nearby crack in the floor, “You’re telling me this place is directly underneath Sunnydale High School?”

“Yes,” said Edwards apprehensively. In his experience, it was seldom a good thing to see Spike both pleased and excited.

“That very same Sunnydale High School which is not only the reservoir of all the young blood in this cursed town but also the command center of our very own Slayer and her gang of spirited wannabes?”

“I don’t think there’s more than one,” Edwards said, trying to smile.

“And yet,” Spike orated, rising to the crux of his incitement, “you and yours spent sixty years coming and going by ten miles of tunnels through that mausoleum we came in at clear on the other end of town?”

“There’s no access to these tunnels from the school,” Edwards argued defensively.

“Bollix!” Spike declared. “All we need is a pick and a shovel. Then we can stroll right in, in broad daylight if we want.”

“But why would we want that?” Edwards asked. “There is nothing up there that we need for the ritual.”

Spike shrugged. “You might be surprised how many ways a back door to your enemy's lair will come in handy,” was all he said. But Edwards recognized the signs in him of a new plot hatching well enough to be deeply worried.

 *****

Amy pouted into the bathroom mirror as she reapplied her lipstick. Her small frown gave her usually pleasant face a strangely cruel look. The dark circles under her eyes didn’t help any. “Refresh,” she murmured. Her image in the mirror became bright eyed and well rested, though Amy still felt completely slagged.

Suddenly, she felt a firm, urgent hand grip her shoulder, tugging her towards a nearby stall. Gasping, she spun towards her assailant, prepared to defend herself by the power of the dark arts if necessary. “Shush!” Willow hissed, beckoning her into the stall and closing the door.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered, her mind reeling at the varied possibilities of Willow’s intentions.

“I called you like ten times!” Willow rasped. Her tone had the emotional effect of shouting though her voice was all but silent.

“I didn’t want to talk to you,” Amy admitted in a low tone that was at once sullen and apologetic. “I made a fool of myself.”

“Look, Amy,” Willow whispered urgently, “this isn’t about... all of that. I’ve got a big, big problem. Please, you have to help me!”

“Okay, okay” Amy agreed, sounding more ruffled than ever, “what’s the problem.”

“It’s my mom,” Willow whined miserably, “I can’t get her to wake up.”

Amy’s brow furrowed. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “I mean, you’ve learned more magic in the last two weeks that I did my first six months. You’re good at this. Breaking your own spell should be like nothing.”

“Well, it’s not,” said Willow near tears now, “I kissed her. I said the words. I tried a dozen times. I hugged her. I held her. I slapped her. I begged her to come back. But she just lays there, breathing in an out, and what if she never wakes up?! What if she starves to death?! Or dies of thirst?! You can die of thirst in just two days you know! And she’s my mom... and...and...my dad’s _gone_... and I’m all by myself...and, I don’t think I like being bad anymore!”

“Willow!” said Amy firmly, gripping her by both shoulders, “breathe! Get a hold of yourself. Nobody’s gonna die. In the first place, the spell doesn’t work like that. You could leave her like that for years if you wanted. It’s like sleeping beauty, perfect preservation.”

“You’re sure about that?” Willow asked, already visibly calmer.

“Completely,” Amy assured her. She chewed her hair for a minute, thinking. “I mean... it’s possible to do a counter spell, but it’s really complicated, and ... things have to be lined up a certain way, you know astrologically. It really should be so much easier for you to break the spell yourself...”

“Well, it’s not,” said Willow glumly.

Amy though for minute, “Well... there’s one kind of general reversal spell that we could do if the dog star was...,” she sighed, “but that’ll take about two and a half years...”

“What about that spell Giles did on your mom?” Willow asked. “That reversed everything and it looked... okay not easy, but you know, easy enough.”

Amy shook her head. “Trust me,” she said, “you don’t want that. That spell can do serious psychic damage. I mean, not to my mom, ‘cause she’s to mean to die, but that spell could literally kill you.”

“Really?” said Willow skeptically. Even given his behavior in the last couple of weeks, it was still hard to imagine Giles undertaking anything that might result in the death of a student.

“Buffy was dying,” Amy pointed out, following her train of thought surprisingly well, “He couldn’t let that happen. He’s totally in love with her.”

Willow laughed nervously, “What?” she said, doing her best to fake total disbelief of what she was hearing, “that’s ridiculous.”

Amy laughed at Willow’s dismayed expression, “Well, I’m not saying he’d _do_ anything about it,” she clarified. “He’s too much of a goody-good guy for that. But it’s there; you can see it in his eyes.”

“Right,” said Willow, “you are so right about that. So anyway... a counter spell.”

Amy gave Willow a hard, evaluative kind of look, then shrugged indifferently. “We’re going to have to do some reading...” she murmured thoughtfully. “You know,” she sighed, “it’s too bad we can’t do a Krathon’s scales... it’s a kind of a diagnostic, thing. It could tell us what you’re doing wrong...”

“So why can’t we?” Willow asked.

“It has to be done at Aphelion, when the Earth is at its fartherest orbital point from the Sun,” she explained, and that’s not ‘til the fourth of July.”

“Well that’s a plan then,” Willow joked, “It might not be such a bad thing for Mom to take a rest for a few months. Hey, maybe I could even transfer back to Sunnydale in the meantime. In fact,” she went on, “maybe we should wait and do that first spell you talked about. That way I could graduate and move out of the house first.”

Willow realized that Amy was staring at her again, even harder than before. In fact, her eyes were wide with horror. She was trembling.

“Oh, come on, Amy,” she assured her, “I’m kidding.”

Amy shook her head. “No,” she said, “you’re not. That’s the problem. Willow, to break the spell, you have to _want_ your mom to wake up—”

“I do!” Willow assured her, exasperated. “We’re supposed to see the lawyer tomorrow and they’re probably already missing her at work... and, even if I get through Court without anyone noticing, there’s the whole probation thing—”

“No,” Amy cut in, “Willow, you’re not getting it. You can’t just want her back because it’s convenient for you, or even because it’s the right thing to do. You have to want her back because you _want_ her back. Willow, to break this spell, you have to love her.”

*****

“It is finished!” cried the bloodied, beaten priest, his body sagging with exhaustion and with the release of both accomplishment and defeat. A smile played upon his lips as he lay on his back on the filthy stone floor looking up at the sagging, broken ceiling. 

It was no easy thing to make holy water, _real_ holy water, in this desecrated place. But it was still the Lord's House and he was still the Lord's Servant. And not for the will of the vampire queen or her consort, but for the will of God, he had done it. Now there was nothing left but to die. His race was run, his crown was won. He had done it. As certainly as that day in the place of the skull, it was finished!

He raised his head a little so that he could look upon the wonder of the cross. It was a massive thing, of wood and gold. The demons had tried to hide it, had covered it with a thick curtain of purple-red velvet, like the robe of shame in which the savior had been mocked as King of the Jews. It didn't matter. The cross was still there. Nothing touched it. It's wide open arms still stood ready to welcome him home.

“So you say,” Spike purred in a voice like oiled silk. “I say we need a test.” His voice became suddenly hard with authority, “Kim, Keri,” he commanded, “Step forward.” With worried looks at one another, they did as they were told. “Do you love me?” Spike asked, quietly, contemplatively.

Drusilla smiled and clasped her hands together silently. She liked this game. “Oh, yes! Yes! Master!” both girls assured him hurriedly, vehemently, pleadingly. “I love you?”

Spike smiled darkly. “Do you trust me?” he asked. Kim hesitated for a second, as if trying to think of the true answer, as if considering the meaning of trust, though finally she echoed Keri's immediate cries of “Yes, Master, I trust you!”

Spike's smile broadened until his jaw had to hang slightly open to contain it, an alligator’s smile. Then, his face went suddenly blank. He speared both girls at once with his eyes. “Put your hand in the water,” he commanded each of them.

Horrified, Keri opened her mouth to protest. But Kim steeled herself and did as she was told. She bit her lip and snarled, but did not scream or pull back as her flesh began to steam and sizzle. 

“Enough!” Spike declared. He smiled appreciatively at the resignation and gratitude with which Kim accepted this gift, cradling her wounded left hand to her chest. He turned a pointed look upon Keri, who was only now beginning to reach her one trembling finger ever so slightly in the direction of the sacred pool.

Swiftly, without a word, Spike swung his stave, giving Keri a sharp blow to temple. Swinging again, he knocked her legs out from under her, then rapped her savagely on the top of the head. Tossing his stave to Kim, who blinked a bit in surprise but did manage to catch it, Spike lifted Keri bodily from the floor and threw her into the pool. 

He ignoring the two-dozen tiny burns he received to his face and hands as the holy water splashed him like cooking grease. “Hold her under,” he instructed Kim, who advanced with the stave in her good right hand to do just that.

When the screaming had stopped, Kim was blistered from head to toe. Spike smiled. “Well done,” he said. “I don't need you to trust me. You'd be a fool to trust me. You don't have to trust to obey. Now,” he added, indicating the broken priest with a wave of his hand, "take your reward."

*****

“Pst!” Willow hissed at Oz as he passed through the back stairwell, on his way to eat lunch off campus as usual, being a Senior and all. He was leaving early, of course, since, as he had sort of mock-bragged to Willow on the phone, he was 'the lunatic running the asylum' in the computer lab now. He smelled her before he saw her. She smelled... strange somehow.

“Hey,” he said tenderly, trying to chalk it up to whatever weird stuff she was going through with her mom and the loss of her father. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Oz,” she cried, bursting into tears, collapsing into his arms, “I’m so glad to see you!” He held her close, his face against her hair. Besides the strange notes in Willow’s own scent, other scents clung to her. 

One was a girl, familiar... Amy, he realized. It was a relatively strong scent. They had shared an enclosed space recently. Even stronger was the scent of her mother on her clothes and hair. Oz felt a brief sense of relief, imaging the two of them, at last, holding one another, sharing their sorrow.

But, if that was the case, it didn’t seem to have helped much. Willow was more distraught than ever. “What’s the matter?” he asked, “why aren’t you at Kent?” Willow only sobbed harder. “Shushshshsh,” Oz said soothingly, “it’s all right. Whatever it is, it’s all right.”

“I love you,” Willow sobbed. “I love you so much, Oz. I want to be with you, just you, nobody else.”

Suddenly, Oz knew what had been bothering him about Willow since he first smelled her. She had tried to wash it off. She had done a pretty good job, but the vaguest trace of the scent still clung to her. It clung _directly_ to her, not just on her clothes or even on her skin or in her hair, but in the folds of her body, in the _roots_ of her hair. It was the scent of another man.

*****

Giles had had the cab driver take him directly from the graveyard to the nearest auto dealership, never wanting to live through the experience of having to so involve a stranger in his personal business again. When he finally got home with his new vehicle, it was nearly noon, but he didn't feel like eating. 

He hadn't much for a couple of weeks, actually, which he supposed was not such a terrible thing for a man his age. He could probably still stand to lose half a stone if he were being entirely honest, he told himself. Of course, he was very fit for his age, it was just that a man his age had no business sparring with Slayers. Or seducing teenage girls.

Of course, Buffy would be furious at the suggestion that he'd taken advantage of her, because it implied that he had her at a disadvantage. The only trouble was that it was true. Granted, Buffy was different from other girls her age. She was exceptional. She was a brave, resourceful, formidable young woman who would someday be far more than a match for him. But she was still seventeen to his forty-seven, Slayer to his Watcher, student to his teacher.

Buffy depended on him, and not merely in the way that all lovers depended on each other. He was her main source of guidance as to who and what she was, not only as the Slayer, but as a soon-to-be-adult. For more than a year, Buffy had come to him with the problems and concerns she withheld from her own parents. He had been privy to information about her personal life that no man outside her family had any right to know. 

He had been trusted with these confidences at least in part because he was placed in a position of authority over her by the Council. More importantly (though she would probably be the last to admit it) on a most basic level, she _accepted_ his authority over her as the price of his guidance and protection.

‘Protection’, Rupert laughed bitterly to himself. He knew what kind of protection the Council really offered to Slayers, and under what conditions. But Buffy didn’t, not yet. As Celeste had put it, shortly before her own untimely death, ‘the shepherd may be fond of the sheep, but he makes his money at the slaughter house.’ 

That was the thought that had kept running through his mind during his conversation with Buffy at the hospital the day before, every time she had tried to steer the conversation to the subject of Walt-Disney-happily-ever-after-love. And every time she had resisted his halfhearted attempts to steer it towards the inevitable conversation they were going to have to have, and soon, about abortion.

Buffy may have thought she was choosing her own destiny in pursuing this relationship, even to the extremity of bearing his child; but Rupert knew full well that if she had had any idea what he and the Council, his family, planned to put her through in just ten short months, she would have chosen differently. 

He also knew what being the child of both a Watcher and a Slayer was really like. What Buffy didn't seem to understand, didn't seem to want to understand, was that it was more than her own destiny she would be choosing. 

It would never have occurred to her to think about what it might be like to be six years old hiding under the attic stairs listening to your father and grandmother discuss not how but whether to tell you that the mother you almost never saw was no longer 'away doing very important work' but now dead at the hands of a demon.

Buffy never thought of any of that because she was a child, innocent, incapable of dealing with the future except in the haziest of theoretical terms, dealing with the present in a way that was scarcely informed by any knowledge of the past. If she had been anything but an utter stranger in the world, she would have realized by now that Giles could never be her proper mate because he was not her equal. 

He was her elder and in many way, her inferior. He was not her partner but her handler, a shepherd in the pay of butchers. Telling himself he was in love with her didn’t change any of that, even though it happened to be true.


	3. That's Why They Call It an Apocalypse

Buffy loitered near the big double doors at the back of the lunch room. She felt the exact polar opposite of ‘hungry’ and the stink of greasy, overcooked food was making her feel more so. Finally, Amy walked in. Her face glowed with radiant health, but she slouched and shuffled her feet like a tired, worried person.

“Hey Amy,” Buffy said, trying to sound casual.

Amy’s brow furrowed. “What’s up?” she asked with obvious concern and maybe just a little defensiveness.

“Do you have a minute?” Buffy asked earnestly, not worrying about casual anymore.

“Sure, Buffy,” Amy said, looking more worried than ever, “just let me get my tray,” then, contemplatively, “You should get something too, you don’t look so good.” Was it Buffy's imagination, or had Amy's eye flitted across her waistline?

“Thanks,” Buffy said with carefully unconcerned sarcasm, following her into the lunch line. Amy shrugged, a slightly too emphatic expression of indifference. After Willow's line about 'girls stuff' yesterday and especially after Giles' reaction, Buffy was not about to tell Amy she felt sick to her stomach. It would have amounted to a much more significant announcement.

Unfortunately, as she contemplated the choice between a thawed and heat lamped burger and a gloppy spoonful of some kind of massive meat pie, her stomach was threatening to make the announcement for her. She passed them both up for a dollop of green Jell-O and a carton of 1% milk.

“Let’s sit outside,” Buffy suggested, hoping she didn’t look as green as she felt. Amy silently followed her to a wooden picnic table in the dappled shade of a large oak, covered with the young buds of the impending spring. Unless Buffy was imagining things, Amy looked a little bit amused for a second.

“We need to talk about Willow,” Buffy said simply.

“What do you mean?” Amy demanded shortly, suddenly not amused at all, her 'indifference' cracking wide open.

“Willow is really messed up right now,” Buffy said. “She hurting, vulnerable. She needs her friends to look out for her, not to take advantage of her and mess her up worse.”

“Humph,” Amy scoffed. “Are _you_ seriously going to lecture _me_ about... taking advantage of Willow?” Her voice dripped with scorn. “Leading her down a path of crime and immorality am I?”

“Look, Amy,” Buffy tried again, stuffing down her resentment, “let’s not make this about blame. Whatever has happened has happened, but this whole magical escape from reality trip is not good for Willow.”

“Willow’s a big girl,” Amy pointed out hotly. “She can make her own choices.”

“To be your magical toy-boy and personal credit card?” Buffy challenged, losing her temper a little.

“Excuse me!” said Amy, her voice rising alarmingly in both pitch and volume, “but, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m Willow’s best friend now, not you, and that’s the way she wants it! Where have you been for the last two weeks, anyway? Off fluffing Mr. Giles ... pillows?”

Buffy was slapped hard in the face by how much Amy actually seemed to know, and by how she must have learned it, from whom. But she had to keep it together. Half a dozen heads had already turned in their direction. “Keep your voice down!” she hissed through gritted teeth.

“Wow,” said Amy, her voice much quieter but no less contemptuous, “now there’s a heartfelt denial.” Buffy’s cheeks burned with anger and embarrassment. Amy narrowed her eyes, smiling cruelly, “Alright,” she said, her volume creeping up again, “I’ve listen to what you have to say; now you listen to me.

"Willow and I will decide what’s good for us. We will do whatever and _whoever_ we want, including each other, and if you go sticking your self-righteous nose into our business again, things are going to get very, very rough for you and your old man.”

“You know,” said Buffy acidly “If it wasn’t for Giles, the best thing you could hope to be by now is dead. He gave you your life back after your own mother took it from you. Now you’re throwing it away again, becoming what she was and dragging Willow down that same path. Don’t you think for a minute that you’re in a position to judge him, or me.”

“I’m not judging,” said Amy coolly, “I’m warning you. Don’t cross me, Buffy.”

Buffy sat a moment seething, trying a get a handle on her emotions, wanting to put her fist through Amy’s face. “You know what, Amy,” she said at last, “You _may_ be a real witch, maybe even half as powerful as you think you are, or a tenth of what your mother was. But I am the Slayer. If you do anything to hurt Willow or Giles, you will be very, very sorry.”

“Aw,” said Amy sarcastically, “isn’t that sweet. Mother bear defending her little cubs.” With a mean smile, she got up and walked back towards the cafeteria with her half eaten lunch. Halfway across the lawn, still in the midst of the picnic tables, she turned and shouted, “Congratulations, Buffy, I hope it’s a boy! That way he can grow up to be a ‘pompous,’ ‘meddling’ ‘idiote’ like his ‘fahtha(r)’!” Her pronunciation of the four key words was not only clearly British, but spot on Giles.

Buffy stood up and looked at Amy with murder in her eyes. She counted in her head up to 97 in the time it took the young witch to reset her face from stark terror to haughty contempt, turn majestically and stride away at a surprisingly high rate of speed.

Buffy swept the crowded picnic area with her eyes. No one laughed or whispered under her killing gaze, but as she walked towards the building, deliberately not moving fast enough to catch up to Amy, she could hear a dull roar erupting behind her back.

“Oh Buffy!” Someone gasped in an atrocious, effeminate British accent, tittering all the while. “Let’s go the libe’ry.” The crowd exploded with laughter. Buffy stopped and almost turned around. The laughter quieted by about 85%. She kept going, not slowing her stride as the volume picked back up again.

*****

“♫Run and catch. ♪

        “♫Run and catch. ♪

                “♫The lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.♪”

The sound of Drusilla’s singing echoed eerily through the ruined church. Spike sat a long while staring at the massive cross above the altar. It was covered with a thick velvet cloth that Edwards had found in some cubby hole or other, but it was still there, staring back at him.

Daytime was always the worst, of course. No hunting, no killing, nothing to do now but wait.

Or dig.

If they were really going to fill that pool with demon dust before the full moon, _especially_ if they were going to do it in such a way as to draw every Slayer on earth to try and stop them, they were going to have to turn and slaughter a lot of attention-gettingly innocent people. There were worse plans for doing that than to lurk and kill in the basements and dark places of Sunnydale High. Somehow though, with Dru sitting one room away, codling Angel’s sorry withered carcass, rocking it, singing to it, giving it her undivided affection, Spike couldn’t quite make himself get up and go bust his back on their behalf without even being asked.

God, how has his unlife come to this? Squatting in a church turned convalescent home for damaged vampires, scheming to restore the hateful, smarmy, imperious prat who had made a life’s work out of bollixing up his entire existence. He wasn’t Drusilla’s mate any more, not even in an enlightened twentieth century everybody’s an equal bloody partner kind of way.

He was her servant, her fool, her tool to be used to improve her life with Angel. More so than at any time since she’d sired him, Spike belonged to Drusilla; she didn’t belong to him. She belonged, as she always had and always would, to Angel, her sire, her lover, the god of her idolatry.

Spike too had bowed before that idol in his time. God how he had looked up to him! Angel, the greatest of all vampires! Thus spake Drusilla, the goddess of his own salvation, and how could she be wrong?

He had called him Sire, Master and every title of love belonging on the lips of an underling. And what had he ever gotten in return? A few pompous hypocritical words of wisdom? Pointers on how to survive as a creature of the night?

Used and oppressed, that was what he'd gotten. Treated like a bloody slave. It was what he was still getting.

It didn't have to be this way, he told himself. He didn't have to put up with this, from either of them. Spike was as good a man, as good a monster, as good a master in his own house as Angel ever was or ever could be. Better. He ought to march right into that room, pull Angel from Drusilla’s arms, grab him by his singed bald scalp and twist his puny neck until his head popped off!

And then what? Drusilla would never love him after that, so what would be the point of anything? God, she would never be his. He would always be hers. He didn’t need any sodding Gypsy soul to curse him. Love was his curse. Love was the enemy of happiness.

Well, fine then. Who said a man or anything like one was ever made for happiness? “Oy!” Spike barked, marching into the side chamber where the peons slept, kicking Edwards in the head where he lay with his Mammy dearest in his arms. “You lot!” he ordered, addressing as well the blonde vampette who sat waiting for her fallen priest to stir. “Get up off your duffs. Time to dig.”

***** 

Amy's cheeks burned and her heart pounded as she made her way swiftly towards the main building of Sunnydale High feeling like she'd just made a dangerous mistake and probably a dangerous enemy. Amy's cheeks burned _because_ her heart pounded and _because_ she was afraid she'd just made a dangerous enemy.

Amy hated fear. It made her feel humiliated and angry. Who was Buffy Summers to threaten her? The Slayer, that was who! It was maddening. It stole her dignity.

By the time she got upstairs, on her way to the computer lab (just to say hi to Oz before her next class, not for any real reason, not because she thought for a moment that he might have heard from Willow, not that she cared if he had) she was too swallowed up in her own deep brown haze of resentment to notice the hushed, electrified atmosphere in the not quite empty hallway.

Then suddenly, she saw what the few silent students were staring at. She saw them and stopped short, catching her breath. Oz was standing right in front of her with a gun in his hand, getting in touch with his inner werewolf, screaming like a maniac... at Willow.

“A person doesn’t just wake up and stop loving somebody!” Oz howled. “Love is forever!”

Willow was sobbing, begging him to calm down. It wasn’t working. She made a break for it, running towards the balcony. A poor escape route. Oz ran after her, still shouting, “Don’t walk away from me—!”

Without a thought in her head, her heart bursting with panic, Amy gestured towards him as if to shove him hard to the ground, though he was more than five feet away. And suddenly, he was on the floor, sliding across the tiles, slamming into the wall. She hadn't even meant to use magic, hadn't even known she could use magic to move something so large and internally animated as a basically grown man.

There was no time to think about that. Amy ran to Willow where she stood on the balcony. “Are you alright?” she asked breathlessly, both of Willow's hands suddenly clasped in hers.

The tention in the air subsided. Students melted away, not wanting to get involved.

For a moment, the two girls stood there, staring into each other's eyes, hearts pounding, no one saying anything. Then suddenly, Willow's look of terror and awe melted to an odd mix of guilt and concern.

“Oz? Oz!” she cried, pulling her hands from Amy's and pushing past her rescuer to help her attacker to his feet, “Oh God, Oz, are you alright?”

“I'm fine,” he assured her, though when he put his hand to the back of his head and drew it away again, held it before him for all to see, it was covered in fresh blood.

Willow shot Amy a miserable, panicked look, “Get the nurse!” she whine-wailed. “He's hurt!”

“Where’s the gun?” Amy demanded. She was confused, and starting to get angry as she finally began to process what had just happened.

“I don’t know,” Oz groaned, “I don’t even know where I got it.” His left arm was bent at a bad angle. He cradled it to his chest while holding his right hand over the bleeding back of his head.

“It’s okay,” Willow crooned, tears streaming down her face, “it’s gonna be okay.”

“Willow!” Amy all but scolded, flabbergasted, “he just tried to kill you!”

“No,” said Willow urgently, “He didn’t. It wasn’t real.” Even Oz registered shock and skepticism at that announcement. “It wasn’t... it was a Hell—,” Willow dropped her voice to a deep stage whisper. "It was a Hellmouth thing," she explained. "It felt like we were... possessed, or something."

Oz was shocked. In a lot of pain, but also shocked. Had he been possessed? He hadn’t felt possess, exactly, but as he replayed the fight he’d just had with Willow in his head, he had to admit that they’d both said thing that... didn’t quite fit the situation.

Then again, what was the situation exactly? He remembered the smell of a man and thinking that Willow was deceiving him, or maybe leaving him? It didn’t quite make sense. Had that been part of the possession? What about the gun? He remembered the feel of the metal in his hand, but not when or how it had gotten there.

But as his heart rate slowed and his passion cooled a little, a few other mysterious things caught his notice. Things like how forcefully Amy had defended Willow. The way they had looked at each other in the long half-second afterward. The more-than-just-hateful way Amy was looking at him now. And how very much Willow still smelled of her.

Was that what he had smelled just before he'd lost control. Had he only imagined—? No! Don't think about that. He didn't know whether to believe he'd been possessed or not, but he hadn't felt possessed. He had felt like a werewolf.

*****

“Oh my God, really?” Harmony squealed with delight, in response to someone who was doing a much better job of whispering. Buffy hunched down in her seat in the front row of her fifth period Trigonometry class, contemplating what level of evil doing was actually necessary to justify killing a witch. “He’s like fifty. That’s so gross.”

She found it easier to listen to people whispering behind her back than to see them whispering in front of her. “Oh you would not!” But there was the risk of actually getting called on to worry about. “There’s no such thing as hot for _his_ age.”

She couldn’t ditch school or even cut class without violating her pre-trial release, so she stared blankly at her open math book hoping to survive another 90 minutes until she could leave. “You’re such a perv, Tiffany.”

“Miss Kendall,” said Mrs. Rae pointedly, “come up to the board and complete the proof for number 23.” Harmony was horror struck. She tried to stammer an excuse, but Mrs. Rae was unmoved by compassion.

Buffy smiled, down at her text book. Maybe there was a tiny bit of justice in the world after all. When she saw what Harmony was writing, she stopped smiling:

_**GIVEN: LOVE IS FOREVER.** _

_**SINCE: A PERSON DOESN’T JUST WAKE UP AND STOP LOVING SOMEBODY!** _

_**THEREFORE: DON’T WALK AWAY FROM ME, BITCH!!!!** _

Harmony, Buffy and Mrs. Rae were the only ones in the room not laughing. Suddenly, Buffy felt extremely ill. “Please,” she said to Mrs. Rae, “please, I have to go... I don’t feel...” Mrs. Rae nodded her understanding.

Laughter followed Buffy as she bolted for the girls’ room. By the time she got there, the world was spinning. She felt too unsteady leaning over the toilet. She sat down on the floor with her back against the stall door....

_Grace knelt on the bathroom floor, retching, weeping. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. She cursed the day she’d ever come to Sunnydale. She cursed the day she’d ever fallen in love._

_Love(!) At seventeen that might have been an excuse, but she was thirty-two, and there was no excuse for it._

_She wished she could turn back time, could smile wistfully at her 'silly little crush' and tell herself, 'this may feel like something deep and real and importation, but it isn't, and even if it was, I'm doing the right thing, making the noble choice, to let it go.' She wished she'd had the strength at the time to do that._

_She wished that she now had whatever quality it was that allowed a person to go down to Mexico, wash away her sins, and come back as cheerful and carefree as if she’d done nothing more than lay on the beach. Failing that, she wished the Earth would open its jaws and swallow her whole._

*****

“All right, children,” Mr. Beach simpered, “Who can tell me something about the mating habits of the Gray Tree Frog?”

“Buffy Summers!” suggested a voice from somewhere behind Xander. He whipped around, but didn’t see who it was. There was a broad scattering of muffled laughter. Where, exactly was the joke?

“Frogs are French, lamebrain,” Dodd McAlvey pointed out, good-naturedly enough.

“Mr. McAlvey—” Mr. Beach began, pleased at least to have an identifiable target.

“What are Brits, then?” asked an amused voice in the front of the room, now behind the teacher. Xander recognized it as coming from Kyle, the former principal-eating hyena.

“Rabbits!” roared his ex-hyena girlfriend, causing Mr. Beach to whip around again, hopelessly lost.

Xander stood and strode several paces forward, ignoring Mr. Beach, focusing on Kyle. “Okay, what gives?” he demanded. He’d gathered by now that they were calling Buffy a slut, but why or how was not exactly clear to him.

Kyle sank a little under Xander’s stare. He might be repressing the main events of his sojourn on the wild side, but he remembered enough to be leery of an angry Xander Harris. “These jerk-wads think—” he began to explain.

“Alright, now—” Mr. Beach tried unsuccessfully to raise his voice.

“—that the gay librarian knocked-up Buffy Summers.”

“That’s enough!” Mr. Beach squeaked, finally managing a slight rise in volume.

“You’re so far off base!” Xander scoffed at both Dodd and Kyle, not knowing which half of the statement was nuttier. “Where’d you get a stupid idea like that?”

“Alright, all three of you—” Mr. Beach stammered.

“That crazy Lesbo, Amy Madison,” Kyle sneered.

“—to the principal’s office!”

“She was just hacked off because Buffy accused her of doing Willow Rosenberg,” Kyle concluded coolly. This elicited more excited murmuring and muffled laughter.

“That’s enough!” said Xander forcefully. “This is all a bunch of crap,” he added to the class in general, “You all know that right?”

“I mean it!” Mr. Beach insisted, actually stamping his foot. “You!” He shouted to Gage Petronsi, obviously not realizing Gage and Dodd were best buds, “go get the principal!”

“Whatever,” said Gage defiantly.

“Hey!” said Xander, recognizing the voice at last, “He’s the one who started all this in the first place!”

“All four of you—” Beach tried again.

“Five,” said Dodd, jerking his head in the direction of Kyle’s girlfriend.

Beach let out a noise that, if it had been louder, would have been a scream. “You!” he said to a random girl on the front row, “go get the school security officer to escort these... hooligan’s to the principal’s office!” At that very moment, the bell rang.

Mr. Beach whimpered, near tears of frustration, or maybe relief, it was hard to tell. Especially since no one really cared that much. The whole class dispersed. Including Xander.

As he made his way to his locker to trade books before his last class of the day, he wondered what, if anything, he could do about the crazy Buffy/Giles rumor and the partly true one about Willow and Amy. He turned the combination lock distractedly and pulled the locker open without really looking in.

He was about to reach for his books when suddenly, something so-not-a-book reached out. It grabbed him by the throat and slammed him hard against the front of the whole wall of lockers. It didn't let go. It slammed him two, three, four times. More.

It was getting to be a long time since Xander had breathed. He clawed at the hand around his throat, but its grip was too tight. He was starting to feel a little lightheaded, a little numb. Even the repeated blows to his body felt... muffled somehow.

This almost had to be what dying felt like he realized vaguely, calmly. He was probably dying.  As in would-be-dead-soon. He felt bad for Willow, and also for his mom.

It would bother a few other people of course, him not being alive. Cordelia would cry so hard and so beautifully it would probably take up a whole segment of the evening news, even in a town with plenty of deaths to choose from. But Willow and his mom would cry for real.

Suddenly, two claw-like hands grabbed him by the shoulders and air rushed into his lungs at last, as the hand around his throat was not so much opened as... dispersed. Snyder slammed the locker shut and spun the lock, his eyes all the while darting around to see if very many people had seen anything. There were a few, but not too many.

“Get to class!” he told them authoritatively, in a tone that did not invite demands for explanation. The witnesses scattered. “You, get the nurse,” he added as an afterthought, making sure to catch one particular random student by the eye so that not everyone thought someone else was going.

*****

Buffy awoke slumped in a bathroom stall with her face pressed against the cool metal partition that separated it from the next stall. The whole front of her shirt was splattered with watery iridescent green vomit. She wiped it off as best she could, which wasn’t well, and zipped her sweater over it.

Clearly she should have eaten something more substantial at lunch. Evidently her hearty breakfast was long gone, already digested, metabolized, and well on it's way to being turned into baby cells. In fact, she felt shaky. And she was starving. And miserable. And humiliated.

There was no way she could face going to sixth period, and no way she could face the consequences of ducking out. Seeing only one solution, she headed for the nurse’s office to hide until 2:30 when she would be able to go to the gym and take a shower.

As she walked that way, she heard sirens wailing in the distance. Approaching sirens. They became very loud and then abruptly stopped, a scant second before three EMTs with two stretchers rushed past her into the nurses office.

Buffy hung back for a moment, not wanting to get in their way. But even knowing that something had to be terribly wrong, she was still very shocked when they rushed out again bearing a moaning, semi-conscious, badly beaten Oz and Xander. The way they were rushing by her, the professionals looking tense and very hurried, Buffy didn't dare stop them to try to find out more.

Instead, she kept walking towards the nurse's office, hoping Nurse Greenly would bend the rules enough to give her a clue what was actually going on. Nurse Greenly was usually pretty good like that.  But as she got closer, Buffy could hear that the nurse was already deep in conversation. With Amy Madison!

“...Then all of a sudden,” Amy lied dramatically, “Oz just slipped on the tile and slammed into the wall! I think the floor must have been wet or something.” Or something was right, Buffy suddenly knew. Something like the constantly growing power of a maturing young witch. A jealous lesbian witch, apparently, who somehow imagined that Willow could be hers if only Oz and Xander could be gotten out of the way.

She had to keep a cool head Buffy reminded herself as she ducked into a doorway between two rows of lockers and listened until Amy left. This was no time to get thrown in jail. That was where Amy belonged, where Buffy was going to have to find a way to make sure she ended up, before someone was forced to do something more permanent to stop her.  Not that Buffy had a clue how she was going to accomplish that exactly.  Anyway she had other problems to deal with right now.  

Buffy squared her shoulders and walked into the nurse's office. Nurse Greenly was sympathetic, diagnosing Buffy with ‘low blood sugar’ and offering her peanut butter crackers and 2% milk.

She was so sympathetic, in fact, that Buffy was tempted to confide, but considering the rumors that were already flying all over school, she couldn’t risk it. The longer she delayed the revelation of her pregnancy, the less everyone would connect it to the present rumors of her relationship with Giles. Hopefully, anyway, assuming they did a better job in the coming months of keeping said relationship a secret.

Of course, Buffy realized, some question remained as to what her relationship to Giles actually was, even now, let alone what it would be in a few months. She loved him. There was no question about that. But it seemed too much to hope that he could ever feel the same way about her, especially given their last real conversation on the subject. Still, she knew firsthand how coming face to face with death could change a person’s perspective. And yesterday, when she had looked in his eyes...

A horrible image flashed through Buffy’s mind. Blood. Death. A shattered face. A single, unseeing eye. For a second, she thought she heard music. “Are you all right?” Nurse Greenly asked, putting a hand to her forehead. Buffy nodded, though she honestly wasn’t sure. “For a minute,” the nurse said, “I thought you were going to pass out again.”

“I’m alright,” Buffy assured her, “really and truly.” Nurse Greenly gave her a gently skeptical look, but said nothing.

Suddenly, Snyder stuck his head into the nurse’s office. “Summers!” he barked, “My office! Now!” When they got there, he shut the door and glared at her. He was a strange combination of smug and seething. Smeething? “I suppose you know why you’re here?” he demanded. Buffy shrugged, she had an inkling, of course, but she was not about to tell him so. “Rumors,” he said quietly, intensely. “Scandalous, scurrilous lies are disturbing the peace and order of this campus, and, as always, your name seems to be at the center of everything.”

“So why don’t you talk to the liars,” she said defiantly, “instead of the people being lied about.” Her hatred of Snyder and the indignity she had been suffering all afternoon helped her to hang on to her anger even though she knew what she was saying was the opposite of the truth.

“Don’t you tell me how to do my job, Missy!” Snyder snarled back. He paused to drink from a cup on his desk. “Lies,” he said meditatively. “They’re everywhere.”

“Look,” Buffy said, “Giles never laid a hand on me, I swear.”

Snyder froze, clearly caught of guard. Oh no! She could so see it in his eyes. That wasn't what he'd meant at all! Thankfully, he recovered quickly. His powers of denial were almost super-human. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Summers?” he demanded. “I know who your... _breeding_ partner is, ” his eye definitely fell on her waistline, there was no attempt to hide it, “and it certainly isn’t Rupert Giles.”

Buffy breathed a sigh of relief. For once she was glad that Snyder was the pig headed, irrational person that he was. But that thought was fighting for head space with another thought. And that thought was, 'Oh my God! I'm _pregnant_! Really, really pregnant! People can see it. Even people as blind as Snyder can see it. This is happening! To me! Now!'

“Four people,” Snyder went on pedantically, accusingly, “all connected to you, all part of your little gang of misfits; Harris, Osborne, Madison, Rosenberg. All of them involved in some kind of brawl in my school. Two of them are in the hospital. And yet, none of them will give me a straight answer. None of them will tell the truth about what happened. But since I can and will report any actual _or perceived_ violations of your terms of release, including instigating violent incidents of this type, to the Juvenile Court, I have a feeling you will."

Before Buffy was able to formulate a response, even a knee-jerk, you-can't-do-this response, the intercom buzzed, “Principal Snyder,” said Mrs. Haulk, the school secretary, “the Sheriff’s calling for you on line two.”

“I’ll take it in your office,” he said, punching the intercom off without waiting for a reply.

“Well then, if you’re busy, I’ll just...” Buffy started to excuse herself.

“Sit,” said Snyder, pinning her to a chair with a look. “Stay. I’ll be back. You stink of lies.” He sniffed the air and wrinkled up his face, as much as to say that in this case lies seemed to smell of milky green vomit.

So much for getting out of here quickly. Buffy leaned on Snyder’s desk, examining his careful arrangement of dull and impersonal personal items. The only photographs were of the school itself and of the Mayor. She heard a small thump behind her. A book had fallen from its shelf. It was a yearbook, Sunnydale High School, 1955. As Buffy picked it up, she found herself struck by a vision, a sort of waking dream....

 _James had no trouble getting in through the loose window in the downstairs hallway. She had said not to come, that she wouldn’t be here... but he heard music coming from upstairs... Their song playing on the phonograph in the music room... “_ _♫_ _the moon may be high..._ _♪_ _” she was waiting. But she wasn’t waiting. She was startled to see him. She jerked her head up from the desk and slammed the drawer shut. Her face was streaked with tears._

“ _I brought you this,” he said, holding out the corsage, “I knew you’d be here.... I thought I’d bring to dance to you.”_

_Grace shook her head, smiling a sad smile. “It’s a Sadie Hawkins dance,” she reminded him. “I didn’t invite you.”_

*****

“What do you mean you can’t charge her?” Snyder demanded. “She’s no longer a student. She was trespassing on my campus.”

“Look,” Ron tried to explain as patiently as he could, “I already spoke to her mother. She said she’s been home all day.”

“A mother’s alibi,” Snyder scoffed.

“You said yourself, Sheila would probably be relieved to have the girl locked up,” the Sheriff pointed out.

“Well, obviously I... miscalculated,” said Snyder crossly.

“I don’t think so,” Ron countered. “I can’t tell that there’s any love lost between them. Besides, three out of four witnesses said they didn't know who the other girl was, and Levinson only said he was 'pretty sure' it was her. Charleston said she thought it was a brunette about thirty. And Madison didn't even see this phantom gun.”

“Missing gun,” Snyder corrected.

“Possible gun,” Ron conceded, splitting the difference.

“We could at least call her probation officer,” Snyder complained sourly, “have them do a search of her house, see if she took the gun with her.”

“Go right ahead,” Ron told him. “I wish you luck, and believe me, I'll be happy to have her arrested. As soon as you bring me some evidence.”

***** 

Willow sat at the Espresso Pump for over an hour before she finally forced herself to go 'home', to the place where what she couldn't quite help thinking of as her mother's body waited. She wanted desperately to go to the hospital, but the police were liable to still be there. They would have questions. She would go later, Willow told herself, in disguise if need be. She had practiced enough with Amy how to do a simple glamour. She was pretty sure she could do one on her own by now.

The door was unlocked. Willow was sure she had locked it. She stood in the foyer, listening. A voice, from the kitchen. Amy! She had the cadence of ordinary rather than magical speech, with long pauses at irregular intervals. On the phone, obviously, but to whom? Willow entered through the archway from the living room. “What are you doing here?” She asked.

“Saving your butt,” Amy hissed, putting a hand over the mouthpiece. Amy turned her attention back to whomever was on the phone. “Yes, well, I understand that, Tom,” she continued, “and it’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts on my behalf or that you have your policies to follow, but you have to understand that we just buried Ira eight days ago. She just wasn't ready today. She can't just snap out of it and be ready because the rules of our Patriarchal Religion respected by the Patriarchal Courts and your Patriarchal School say its fine for her to grieve for seven days but not eight!...”

“I’m not calling you _anything_ Tom! I know it's a good school. What I'm talking about is a problem with our civilization. It’s structural....”

Suddenly, astounded, Willow realized what was happening. But why would Tom Kaminski of all people be fooled by it? To be sure, Amy’s word choices, her arguments, her sentiments were in perfect imitation of Sheila Rosenberg, but the voice was unmistakable Amy Madison. Wasn’t it?

“I'm not asking you to say she was there, Tom,” Amy went on, sounding very Amylike and very Sheilaesque at the same time. “I'm asking you to excuse her absence and to be patient with her when she arrives tomorrow....Yes, of course, Tom,” She concluded, finally, “Thank you. For everything.... I know you do, Tom. My love to Ruth and the kids.”

“Alright,” Amy said to Willow, hanging up at last, “how did you know it was me?”

***** 

It was nearly four o’clock by the time Buffy finally managed to escape from campus. Fifteen minutes later, she knocked on Giles' door. She felt self consciously adolescent, wearing her gym clothes, for lack of anything else, her wet hair pulled back in a pony tail, nothing on her face but a little lip gloss, though at least the baggy sweat pants and t-shirt somewhat disguised her burgeoning waistline.

Giles put down his scotch and his book and turned down Vivaldi’s ‘Summer’ on the stereo. He went to the door expecting it to be someone from the furniture store delivering his new bedroom set. It was Buffy.

He was surprised to see her. That much was clear. Happy was another question. He looked at her with the same big, sad puppy-dog eyes as he had at the hospital 23 hours earlier.

She smiled nervously. Her simple, clean appearance was the innocent soul of beauty. Her longing eyes struck him through the heart.

He smiled back at her with warmth and tenderness and she could breathe again. “Come in,” he all but whispered.

Her dancing emerald eyes lit up his heart with reciprocal joy, circumstances notwithstanding. The mere fact of her existence was a delight to his weary soul. She stepped across his threshold, holding her school books in front of her. A dubious portrait stared up at him from under an indubitably venerable name.

“Now there’s the fellow who could tell us a thing or two about love,” Giles said. For an instant Buffy wondered if he was joking. She stopped wondering, because it didn’t matter. He could think what he wanted about Shakespeare. He had said the one word they hadn’t dared to say for eleven endless days. Love.

The look she gave him at that word! Like he had rescued her from the jaws of Hell! _Is it too late to take that back? Do you want to?_ He wanted to fold her in his arms, to promise he would never let her go, that he would always be her rock, her pillar, her man. And then he did fold her in his arms. He couldn't help himself. He held her tightly against him, tucking her head under his chin, terrified.

But still, it was not in his power to make that promise. Holding her now was the wrong thing to do, just as 'love' was the wrong thing to say, he realized. But it didn't feel wrong to say it. It felt very, very right. True with a capital T. The thing that felt wrong was denying it was a promise. A promise he could never keep, love not withstanding.

“I'm pregnant,” Buffy murmured, inevitably, against his chest. There was a catch in her voice but only just. She was nervous, but it was painfully clear that she thought everything would be alright. That somehow he would make it all right. He wrapped his arms around her even tighter and gently stroked her hair, not trusting himself to speak.

The Doorbell rang. Giles explained about the bedroom set. “You'd better go,” he apologized. “This being... such a small town... Well, there are liable to be rumors flying all over the place in no time if we're not careful.”

Buffy smiled weakly and nodded her assent. She had to tell him, and soon, that the 'rumors' as he called them, were already all over school thanks to Amy Madison as well as the other no good she had been up to. She couldn't just let him walk in to work in the morning and get blindsided.

But with the delivery men already standing there ringing his doorbell, there was no time. Besides, her mother had already warned her that she expected her home from school earlier rather than later (regardless of the actual time of her court ordered curfew) if she wanted to keep up the flow of 'earned trust.'

Buffy slipped out the back door as Giles let the delivery men in the front, leaving him with one of those I'm-joking-unless-you're-not jokes about the utility of his new bedroom furniture. His mildly amused/mock?-disapproving response was acutely noncommittal.

She would just have to come by later on tonight, she decided. Not that anything that might ever happen again was really going to happen tonight. They still had too much to talk about. Besides the fight they both knew they eventually had to have on the topic of 'we have a sacred duty' vs. 'we are human being who deserve to have a life', there was as ever, as always, the Hellmouth.

Oh well, Buffy thought as she walked into her house by the kitchen door (the way she always came and went in the daytime) at least she'd be home before her mother. It wasn't even five o'clock. It was a good thing too. She really didn't want to have to explain why she had come home in her gym clothes. Now she would have a little time to pick something appropriate to wear to dinner. Something that didn't make her look pregnant.

Speaking of which, Buffy thought, she had better fix herself another little snack, because it could still be two or three hours until dinner if she waited for her mom to get home and cook. She was already feeling exhausted and she had better keep up her strength for tonight.

Besides whatever wrangling she still might have to do with Giles, she was not about to go yet another night without a real patrol. She couldn't use being pregnant as an excuse to slack off if she was going to insist that there was no reason for her not to be. Because you can't really say, 'it's nobody's business,' unless you can also say, 'I'm still doing my job.'

With all of that in mind, Buffy dutifully opened the refrigerator and stared into it, needing, not wanting to eat something. Nothing looked good. Nothing looked easy. Nothing looked right. She could have grabbed a yogurt at least, but suddenly the thought of it disgusted her, all those tiny bacteria, teeming inside that little plastic cup. She settled on nothing, changed her mind again, then settled for nothing after all.

Buffy turned around, swinging the refrigerator shut, and was startled to find that she was standing face to face with an eighty-eight-year-old, retired-but-not-really-retired homicide detective. He had his glasses on and his notebook in his shirt pocket, in fact, looking not at all like he might have just dropped in for dinner, which he couldn't have anyway.

“Grampa Wallace?” she asked doubtfully, as if he might be just an apparition after all, “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Seattle, solving those unsolvable cold cases. Jeri didn't kick you out again did she?”

The old man shrugged and raised an eyebrow at the same time. “No hug?” he asked, “Right to the questions? Who's the cop here, me or you?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Buffy mumbled. He heard her, and probably had no idea what she meant, but he let it go, which Buffy knew was not at all the same thing as not noticing.

She hugged him, a little more than dutifully, but not much. She liked Grampa Wallace and she was always glad to see him, no matter why.... But still, considering exactly what had been happening in her life lately...

“Alright,” Buffy said when they got done hugging, “Not that I'm not glad to see you, so don't take this the wrong way, but again I ask, why are you here? I mean really.”

Wallace requested with a gesture and Buffy agreed with a nod to move into the living room where they sat on the sofa as he answered, looking uncharacteristically grim, “Your mom called me last night, and I flew down this morning. She's worried about you. This thing with the police, this 'Angel' guy. She asked me to talk to you.

"But then,” he added seeming very worried himself, which was not like him at all in Buffy's experience, “I asked her to tell me a little about the other people in you're life who might be involved in this situation. And now the main thing I want to know is, how badly are you mixed up with this psychopath, Rupert Giles?”

Buffy blinked. “What on earth makes you call him that?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep from sounding as angry and defensive as she suddenly felt on his behalf, only realizing that she had laid one hand protectively over her abdomen when she noticed Wallace noticing it.

“Because he killed at least two women in Seattle in '90 and '92,” Wallace informed her gravely, “and at least two men in London in the 1970s, besides all of the murders he's clearly had something to do with since he moved here.

"He also kidnapped a fifteen-year-old girl, Christine Laughton, from her home in Lancashire about four years ago. She hasn't been seen or heard from in over three years. The last letter she wrote home to her sister she claimed he quote, 'acts like he thinks he's my husband and my father at the same time'.

"So yeah, I want to know, how twisted up with this guy are you? And is he the father of your baby?”


	4. You Have to Know What to See

“Maybe you shouldn't come in with me,” Willow pointed out nervously as they pulled up to Xander's house. Amy was driving. She had just gotten behind the wheel without asking, as if the face she apparently wore made her feel entitled.

“Don't be silly,” she said. “If things are ever going to get back to normal for you, especially with Xander, Sheila has eventually got to make nice with Jessica, right?” Willow had to admit that this was true, though she still had trouble believing that, no matter what her own senses told her, when other people looked at or listened to Amy, they magically saw and heard Sheila Rosenberg. “And there will never be a better time,” Amy pointed out. “He's hurt; we're concerned. It's a great excuse.”

Things started out predictably awkward, uncomfortable, _weird_. Xander was asleep upstairs, on drugs, not to be disturbed. In between Jessica's thinly veiled recriminatory attacks on 'Sheila' for 'forgetting' to notify her of the time of Ira's funeral, they were assured that Xander was or would be 'fine.' He _only_ had a a concussion, two cracked ribs, a broken arm and some very ugly bruises, especially on his throat, oh and just a hairline skull fracture. Nothing, really. This whole conversation went on almost entirely between the two 'moms', in exactly the kind of politely hostile fashion they'd always used with each other.

Willow was shocked by the accuracy of Amy's performance. She had never realized her friend was so observant and had learned her mother so well. But still, it was beyond bizarre to observe their conversation, witnessing Jessica react to Sheila, yet all the while seeing Amy. What was even more bizarre, what was frankly disturbing, was the _way_ she was seeing Amy. She kept thinking it was some residual effect from the Willard spell, that it would wear off. But it didn’t.

Amy was beautiful of course. Willow had always know that. Even as a chubby twelve-year-old there had been... something about her, especially her eyes. Her skin had always been soft. Her lips had always been full and red and perfect foils to her lovely smile. But the way Willard had looked into those eyes, had touched that skin, had kissed those lips.... It touched something new in Willow’s soul; something new that was, paradoxically, something old. Basic. Eternal.

‘But she’s a _girl_!’ A panicked voice in Willow’s mind called out. ‘Yes,’ said a much calmer, stronger voice, ‘exactly!’ That calm strong voice, the part of her that wasn’t scared, scared Willow more than anything. It was one thing to have temporary gay boy feeling for Xander when she was... not herself. But the way she felt about Amy, the way it now suddenly somehow seemed she had sort of _always_ felt about Amy, was something else altogether.

Truthfully, as eager as Willow had been to see Xander, she was now glad that he was asleep. It was bad enough having to ignore and cover up her inner turmoil in front of Jessica. She wasn't sure she could handle trying to do the same in front of Xander. With Oz, it was out of the question.

She had meant to try to see both boys today, but she now realized Amy had been right to object to the second visit, if not exactly for all of the right reasons. She wouldn't push it, Willow decided. She would go home and call his parents on the phone to check on him. It was the only way. Because, hey, just basic common sense: when your boyfriend has already threatened to shoot you once today, no matter the reason, it's probably not a good idea to show up at his house with the person you can't stop thinking about cheating on him with.

*****

“What’d I tell ya, Mate?” Spike said triumphantly, pulling the flashlight from Kim's still badly blistered hand and shining it on the newly exposed concrete. They had only had to dig about five feet, starting from a tunnel not three yards outside the church. He tapped at the structure experimentally with the end of his shovel, putting his ear to it to listen. “Water,” he confirmed. “Lots of it. Storm drain maybe.”

Spike grabbed his pick and reared back, ready to strike. “Don’t!” Edwards warned. Kim looked from one to the other of the two older vamps, unsure what to think. “There could be a grate!” Edwards insisted, near panic, “The sun—”

“Don’t be such a wimp,” Spike jeered. He struck the concrete one firm blow, making a hole about the size of a grapefruit, with cracks running from it in three directions. Water gushed from the opening. The three vampires were drenched in seconds. The water began to run through the tunnel, downhill, away from the church. “Now,” said Spike, grinning at Kim's relief and Edwards' impotent anger, “we’ll just let that drain off a little and come finish up about sunset.”

*****

“Mom, you're not listening to me!” Buffy insisted, beside herself with affronted dignity. She actually stomped her foot. Stomped it. It came down hard. There was a mighty stomping. Breakable objects rattled in their shelves and cabinets. It was the kind of stomping that can lead to flinching in the wives and mothers of people who have been known to throw things not exactly at be definitely near them. Joyce flinched. “There is nothing, and I mean _nothing_ going on between me and Giles!!!!” Buffy railed. “Not sex, not drugs not... killing people, nothing!”

“Buffy, I know this is tough...” Joyce was trying very hard to insist (without railing) right back. It wasn't working very well. She wasn't good at insisting. She wasn't even good at railing. She never had been. As much as B. F. Wallace knew he should keep his mouth shut, should stay out of the way, should silently bolster his granddaughter’s parenting, it was a struggle not to try to take control of the situation. The situation was out of control. The circumstances were extreme. Joyce didn't seem up to extreme parenting.

“What are you going to do!?!” Buffy demanded, rounding on the old man despite his restraint, ignoring her mother. “Call the local police? Tell them you've had his name on a list of suspects for seven or eight years and never did anything 'cause you don't have any evidence? Tell them what your friend at Interpol _claims_ their files _don't_ say? That's your plan, really? I mean, say you're right about everything, you think what? That he killed his _other_ girlfriend and I'm helping him frame my _other_ boyfriend for it?”

Buffy whipped around to face her mother who was sort of half approaching, half retreating with her mouth opening and closing like an indecisive fish. “You want to tell the _police_ that?” She demanded. “How is that helping me? You want me to have my baby in prison? You think that's where I belong? You think that's the kind of person I really am? Someone who would... do what you've got _him_ accusing me of doing?” she concluded gesturing towards Wallace emphatically, contemptuously.

Wallace could hardly bear that in silence and Joyce knew it too because she held up a hand to remind him to hold his tongue even as she responded, ice over fire, struggling with her own temper, “Buffy don't you dare refer to your great-grandfather that way! I asked for his help because _clearly_ —”

“Oh! I'm _sorry_ ,” Buffy cut her off caustically, doing something with her head that mocked a submissive tilt without missing an angry roll by much, directing her words theatrically in Wallace's direction, “Did I _offend_ you with my rude response to being called a liar and a murderer in my own house? By my own family!” she added pointedly in Joyce's direction. “Who think they have to spy on me and go through my _trash_ instead of just _asking_ me about my life! Wow! Really feelin' the love here people!”

“And what would you have said if I had asked you?” Joyce demanded quietly, undercutting the silence that rung in the wake of Buffy's tirade. “What have you said every time I've asked you what's wrong for the last year?”

*****

“It's just too much!” Edwards complained. “We need to wait another half-hour.” He shielded his eyes with his hands, wishing he had something to shield his hands with. Kim had already retreated to the church, using the excuse that her blisters were popping. Spike sniffed scornfully, but he turned up the collar on his black leather coat, Edwards noticed.

The dim afternoon rays angled their way into the damp, foul smelling chamber through the large grate from the opening above and perpendicular to it, but they were not filtered or diluted by anything. It was a lot for the average vampire to cope with.

Still, Edwards didn’t know if his eyes were watering more from the sun or from the sickening chemical stench of the place. Worse, Spike was now eyeing the hatch in the ceiling with insufficient caution. Edwards was sure that he was seconds away from leaping up and opening it when they heard the voices: two humans in the chamber above.

“Are you sure about this, Karl?” A grating female voice demanded worriedly.

“Ruthie,” crowed a confident older male voice, “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life! We’re going straight to the national championships!”

“But is it worth the risk, Karl?”

“What kind of a question is that? Don’t you want to be a winner for once in your life, Ruthie?”

“You know I do,” she said desperately, “more than anything,” torn between fear and temptation as humans so often were.

“Well, there you go then,” said Karl, as if that settled everything. Maybe it did. Edwards didn’t hear any response from the woman. Perhaps they’d gone. Spike relaxed a little, apparently reaching the same conclusion.

Edwards breathed a sigh of relief. The radiation level in the subterranean space was becoming tolerable at last as the sun began to set. If they could just rest here a few minutes... Suddenly, the vampires' ears were greeted by the metal on metal sound of the hatch being opened.

Edwards flattened himself into a corner and covered his face, preparing for a potential flood of sunlight. Spike leapt vertically to the top of the chamber and pulled the beefy, gray haired man through the opening. His loud, startled cry was cut off abruptly by Spike's Liverpool kiss.

Above, the woman screamed and fled. The sound of her heavy, broad-soled feet slapping against the tile floor echoed down into the drainage space below. “Come _on_ ,” Spike ordered as he laid the unconscious man almost gently on the wet concrete and leapt up once again to scramble through the opening.

To his great relief, Edwards found that the room above was a windowless utility space, even darker than the drain below. The place was at once cavernous and cramped, stuffed with equipment and supplies that Edwards could not identify.

Spike caught up to the woman, a behemoth in a white nurse’s uniform, in seconds. She whimpered softy, lips trembling, trying to get it together enough to beg for her life. Spike looked at her with distaste, shrugged and vamped out, relishing her screams, trying to get himself worked up to the idea of biting her.

It didn't take long. Her abject terror was intoxicating. Spike was hungry and excited and ready to strike when suddenly, Edwards gave her a sharp rap to the temple, knocking her unconscious and breaking the mood.

“What the blazes did you do that for?” Spike snarled. Edwards stared at him in mute, terrified anger. Their presence beneath the school was supposed to be a secret. It needed to stay a secret for another week or close to it. That scream could have brought witnesses. It could have brought the Slayer. It still could.

“Relax, Colonel Killjoy,” Spike chided, quickly cooling from enraged to annoyed. “There's no one here to hear her sound off at this hour. Look at the size of her, though,” he added thoughtfully. “We could fill that tub in no time we land a few whoppers like this.”

“Soft tissue gets you almost nothing, ash wise,” Edwards reminded him, sourly. “What we need is bone mass.”

Spike shrugged. “She'll be good for a meal first anyway,” he pointed out. “You could top up to almost your full gallon fresh from that and still have plenty to mix. Let's chain 'em and drain 'em for a while. Then Dru can turn them... after they get to watch Friar Schmuck dunk poor little Kimmy.”

“Yes,” Edwards agreed, with just a hint of coy mockery. “She should have both. As befits her position.”

*****

Giles walked into the library and turned on the lights. He hadn't been able to stand another minute alone in his house with absolutely nothing to do but think about the situation with Buffy. So he had come here, to the one place where he had even a slim hope of getting anything useful done. And of course, the one other place where he knew she would have no trouble finding him when she was ready for an all out discussion.

And of the two places, of course, this was the one that was decidedly without bedroom furniture. He needed to keep a cool head, to remain objective, rational with Buffy, in so far as that was still possible. As morally weak as he felt, as emotionally needy as she was, as terrified of the future as they both were, as overwhelmed by their present emotions, Giles was not at all sure they could trust themselves around bedroom furniture.

The library was the same as it had ever been. Occult books filled the shelves. Weapons rested unseen in their cabinets. His private office waited, jammed with its neatly organized clutter of items significant only to him.

But it was different too. It didn’t feel like his private domain anymore, his place of refuge, his stronghold in the fight against evil. It felt vulnerable, exposed. It felt very much like a public school library. A ridiculous place to carry on a clandestine war. A worse place for a secret affair.

Giles stared a long while at the seamlessly repaired floor, at the place where the Earthquake had cracked it open nine months ago. On the night that Buffy had risen from the dead to triumph over the forces of darkness and save the human race from eternal damnation once again, for just a little while longer.  The mouth of Hell still waited there, beneath his feet, as it always had. But tonight it felt more alive somehow. Watchful. Waiting to pull him in certainly, but also hungry for another chance to defeat Buffy.

The Council likewise waited. To test her. After all that she had done. Knowing everything that she was. How did they dare? And how did he dare to say that he 'loved' her even as he tacitly conspired with the rest of them to subject her to that test? How could it possibly be right to silently wait for the next ten months to secretly _incapacitate_ a girl who loved and trusted him, all as part of a ritual ordeal that could all too easily become, effectively, a human sacrifice? A girl who loved and trusted him and who might soon become the mother of his child.

Of course, all of these thoughts, logically, tended towards the conclusion that he must warn Buffy at once of what the Council intended for her. But even starting from the assumption that his highest duty of loyalty was to Buffy (despite any number of solemn vows to the contrary, not to mention the commitments and sacrifices others had made on his behalf) it hardly followed that he had the right to reveal secrets that would put her at odds with the Council. Especially knowing that to do so might rob her of the opportunity to ever be fully accepted and respected for the Slayer that she was.

Giles thought of the two years he’d spent with Amanda, watching her become a withered, melting shadow of her former self. Because Celeste had loved her too much, had tried to save the girl who was supposed to do the saving. And gotten herself killed. Just as he had, in the heat of passion, come so close to doing on that night nine months ago. He couldn’t do that to Buffy in cold blood. After the disgrace his actions would undoubtedly bring her to in the Council’s eyes, she would need some way to redeem herself.

And so all of this meant what? That he should lie to her, should _poison_ her, as an act of kindness and respect? It was all an endless loop. A hopeless tangle. Tearing his eyes away from the floor, leaving the Gordian knot unsolved, Giles walked into his office, meaning to distract himself for an hour or two by actually doing the job the State of California was paying him to do.

In the middle of his desk was a large cardboard box. Scrawled across it in black magic marker was the legend, ‘J.C.’s stuff.’ The box was full of personal things (books, a sweater, a day planner, one corkscrew-like ‘earring’) which had obviously been left in Jenny's classroom. There were a handful of not-so-floppy disks as well, which Giles realized, for Jenny, could very easily be personal things.

It struck him with some force how little they had actually known one another, how little they had walked in each other’s worlds. He had called it a betrayal that she kept her origins from him and counted himself honest for sharing the secrets that he was a Watcher, Buffy the Slayer. But, the truth was, he had shared almost nothing with her of what it _meant_ to be a Watcher; though perhaps, being a Gypsy, she’d had some idea of that after all.

He thought of the days he had wasted being angry with her, feeling wounded and superior because she had kept her own counsel, made her own judgments about whom to trust and what to reveal, just as he had. Using Buffy as his excuse not to forgive her.

Suddenly, Giles felt... not a presence exactly, but a sort of calling _to_ a presence, a longing that promised to be fulfilled. As if in response, he reached into the box and pulled out a yellow 3 ½ inch disk. It felt extremely important in his hand, powerful, dangerous. The disk bore a hand-printed label: RESTORATION.

With a little cry of surprise, Giles dropped it back into the box. Whatever it was that had reached out to him was gone. That label could not mean what he had momentarily thought that it meant. He was sure he had heard Willow or Oz use that same term in a computer related context. It was something for fixing system crashes, nothing more. It could not possibly be.... Even fate could not be so cruel as to deliver to him at this moment the means.... Even the slightest possibility.... No. It wasn't that.

His hands still shaking, Giles reached back into the box, this time seizing upon something more familiar but, upon inspection, only a little less discomfiting. A book: a gift, carefully chosen, agonized over, but inevitably ordered (on line with Willow's assistance) without being first read. It might have been the newest book he'd ever bought, published only that month, a selection from the letters of Lady Lovelace.

He had meant it as an expression of hope for understanding, a bridge between two worlds, an acknowledgment that the near future need not be as unpleasant as the very recent past. He had been disappointed in it, had found the Editor’s style of comment distastefully personal, over-enthused. Goaded on by his insistent young accomplice, he had given it to her anyway. Behind Buffy's back, of course. Any overture towards anything half so warm as forgiveness or understanding between them had had to be, at that time, behind Buffy's back.

Jenny had accepted his gift gratefully. Hopefully. More than that, she had loved it. At the time, he had been relieved. But now, it seemed to him a sad comment on the idea that their 'love' was meant to be.

The whole course of their aborted romance suddenly seemed to him to be the delusional pursuit of a very lonely man, desperate to forge a bond with the first attractive woman who had gotten close enough to pay him any attention in almost a decade. No matter they had nothing in common. No matter they were more than half enemies. Perhaps he had only seen 'love' in his casual lust for her because that had been what he had so longed to see.

Depressing as that thought was where Jenny was concerned, Giles tried to put it to good use in his present context. He tried to tell himself that it might just as easily be applied to his feelings for Buffy, that perhaps he was seeing the whole thing for what it wasn't, imagining something that was never really there. Somehow, he could neither quite convince himself nor entirely shake the idea. So instead of a means to escape his feelings, he realized with a small snort of self-deprecation, he had only found a new and more innovative way to feel guilty about them.

Good Lord! What would Buffy say if she could hear the nonsense that went on inside his head? Giles smiled wryly. Probably something like, 'Hey there, Hamlet, over intellectualize much?'

Suddenly, Giles was pulled from his thoughts by a tiny, ghostly female voice whispering soft and low, “I need you. I... need... you.” Once again he felt that sense of Calling To. He rushed out into the hallway, impelled to action without regard to will or thought. He was not alone.

“IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT I _FEEL!!!!!!!_ ” a man was shouting. George Capel, Giles realized, the janitor. Giles rounded the corner, instinctively putting on speed. He could see them now. The girl was young and blonde and might have been attractive were her face not marred with some sort of boils or blisters.

 **“THEN TELL ME YOU DON'T LOVE ME!!!!”** she wailed, even more loudly than George had been shouting, beside herself, crying tears of grief and rage, **“** _ **SAY IT!!!!!”**_

Based on her age, she looked to be a student.  Oh the _irony_ of the censorious thoughts that reflexively formed in Giles's mind! But there was no time to now, neither for hypocritical tut-tuting nor for frank self loathing.

“A person doesn't just wake up one day and stop loving someone!” she continued with relatively quiet anguish. Her voice and her hand were shaking. The _gun_ in her hand was shaking. “love is _forever_!” she declared, her voice breaking with emotion.

Forever. Not the 'happily ever after' kind. The in the ground until it falls into the sun kind.

This was not the time for introspection or deliberation. Giles threw the book in his hand with the precision of a trained fighter (which, of course, he was) hitting the girl squarely in the temple. She was staggered back by the blow. The gun clattered to the floor. Giles tackled her, irreversibly in motion before it occurred to him that (disarmed as she now was) the girl could probably have been subdued with much less force.

In fact, by the time such a thought occurred to him, it had already been proven untrue. The 'girl' snarled, her yellow eyes gleaming. She wrapped her cold hands around Giles's throat and began to throttle him.

For a moment, Giles lost consciousness. When he floated woozily to the surface of reality again, he was pinned beneath her. Her fangs were buried deep in his throat, sucking the life from him. He was near to death, and quite possibly to something infinitely worse.  His eyes darted desperately but systematically around the empty hallway. Capel was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, impossibly, just as he was about to abandon all hope, another face filled his field of vision just beyond the vampire's shoulder, the last person he could have possibly expected to see. He felt a wonderful release of pressure as the hundred pound weight on his chest dissipated with a pop into a shower of dust.

“Why are you just standing there, you idiot!?!” Snyder barked at Capel, who was standing in a kind of permanent cringe, an almost-but-not-quite-crouch, only his head and shoulder's sticking out of the principal's office. “Call an ambulance! Do I have to do _everything_ myself around here?” Trembling, Capel ducked into the office to do as he was told.

The look of grim concern on Snyder's face as he knelt and held his own wadded up suit coat to the damaged veins in Giles's neck, using pressure to stop the bleeding, seemed surreal. It was an odd sensation to be sincerely and rightfully grateful to such a person. It was unsettling to realize that he owed this man his life. Then again, the circumstance put him on what seemed a fittingly odd footing with Snyder, just as he was with everyone and everything in his life these days.

Still, the world began to feel a little more as it should be when (as the sound of an approaching siren assured them both that his imminent death was no longer a likely event) Snyder knelt down even lower and whispered in his ear, “I wouldn't go spreading any rumors about what just happened here if I were you. I think we both know there's enough gossip about what goes on in this school, and I assure you, the rumors about _you_ could get even uglier and spread very quickly if your credibility as a witness to this incident becomes an issue of public concern. Am I making myself clear.”

Yes, quietly threatening was a comfortingly familiar tone for Snyder to take, especially when he was desperately overplaying his hand, banking on Giles fearing rumors of his involvement in Jenny's death, which as near as he could tell, were thus far nonexistent.

“I have no more wish to publicize what just happened here than you do,” Giles assured the principal honestly. It was the truth and so he said it, notwithstanding the potential that it could be taken as capitulation and encourage this baboon in future displays of dominance.

Giles was in no shape for even verbal sparring at the moment, not even with this lightweight. Besides, Snyder _was_ his supervisor, and he _had_ just saved his life, risking his own against a ravenous vampire, it should be noted. These facts earned him some civility, Giles decided, his own threats notwithstanding.

Suddenly, Giles's brow furrowed, then before he could stop them, his eyes widened. To justify both his look of perplexity and the inevitable follow-on look of comprehension, which even Snyder could not have missed in this proximity, Giles gasped, “What _did_ just happen here?!”

*****

Buffy strung the sheets together and pulled hard to tighten the knots. Too hard. She ripped the first sheet and had to start over.

It had been decided that she was to go to bed early, and in her mother's room. Supposedly, This was just so Grampa Wallace, as a 'guest' could have her bed to sleep in while Joyce took the couch. Talk about implausible deniability! It would have made a 1000% more sense either for Joyce to just give Wallace her bed or for Buffy to sleep on the couch, and they all knew it.

What they really wanted was to stop her from exiting via the tree at her bedroom window. And to get her out of their way while that went through her stuff.  She could hear them in there arguing, their voices constantly creeping upwards with emotion then falling as they realized how loud they had gotten.

Mom had mentioned the Carsters Clinic at least once. That had been enough. Of course, Buffy could have just gone into her room, packed a bag, and walked out the front door. It wasn't like either or both or them could have physically stopped her. But if she could leave quietly enough, she would get more of a head start.

As she had hoped, Buffy's ersatz rope latter was long enough and sturdy enough that she made it to the ground without the noise that would have come from having to clamber down the drainpipe or the side of the house itself. She was still wearing her gym clothes, which at least were easy to move in, and baggy enough that they still fit and might for a while. She'd put a windbreaker of Joyce's on over them, though. She'd chosen it mainly for the pockets, but also because it was dark blue, in contrast to the maroon and yellow she was likely to be reported as 'last seen wearing.' The only weapon she carried was a small knife strapped to one ankle. Her only resources were Joyce's few pieces of real jewelry, which she hoped she might be able to pawn for a few hundred dollars.

Buffy had given quite a bit of thought to where she was going during her scant few minutes of preparation. The answer had quickly become obvious. She couldn't go to Giles, not to his house or to the library. Those were the first places they would come looking for her. Willow's was out because of Sheila. Besides, she was the second person everyone would think of. Xander was hurt and probably still in the hospital. So was Oz. But Buffy needed someone to help her. Someone with a car. She had no money to get on a bus tonight, and by the time she could get to a pawnshop in the morning, everyone on Sunnydale would 'be on the look out' for her.

Someone with a car whom her mom wouldn't think of the _very_ first minute but who also wouldn't rat her out? There was only one such person. But she had to move fast. Because as soon as they had checked with Giles and Willow, Cordelia would not be far down the list.

Buffy ran at her best speed, which was not exactly superhuman, except that most people can't _sprint_ three and a half miles. She made it in about ten minutes and spent the better part of another minute catching her breath. She had thrown a dozen rocks against the window with no response before she realized that Cordelia wasn't home. Of course Cordelia wasn't home. It was barely eight o'clock. Why would she be?

“Buffy?” Buffy was startled by the equally startled voice at her elbow. “Buffy, what are you doing here?” Cordelia asked, as Buffy turned to face her.

“It's kind of late to be out walking alone,” Buffy said, suddenly wanting to avoid all relevant subjects for just a little longer. Cordelia wasn't distracted that easily. She took in Buffy's uber dressed down look and the tear streaked makeup she hadn't even thought to try to repair and asked, gently, worriedly, “Oh my God, Buffy, what's wrong.”

Buffy took a deep breath, there was something mildly humiliating about receiving sincere expressions of concern from Cordelia, but she swallowed her pride and held it together. “I'm in big, big trouble,” she explained forthrightly. “Like get out of town trouble. Mom is about to try to put me in a mental institution. And she and her grandfather (don't ask) are also thinking about going to the police with a bunch of stuff they think they know about me and Giles, which is nearly all false, but not nearly enough.” Buffy looked down at her feet, she had said this much, she might as well ice the cake. Everybody at school would know by tomorrow anyway. “Also, I'm pregnant,” she said.

“Yeah,” Cordelia said, “I heard that. Everyone's saying it was Giles.” Buffy looked up at Cordelia miserably. Cordelia sighed a sigh that said, 'well, why not. It's just that kind of world.' Buffy felt guilty, like she was betraying Giles's trust. But she needed to be straight with Cordelia if she was going to beg her for help. Besides, she hadn't really _said_ anything.

“Come inside,” Cordelia suggested. “Daddy's out of town and Mom won't come downstairs unless the house gets hit by a freight train.”

“So what _were_ you doing out on foot at night?” Buffy asked to fill the silence as they sat down at Cordelia's kitchen table and Cordelia brought her a glass of water without being asked.

“I was out on the front porch looking at the stars,” Cordelia admitted, slightly embarrassed. “I came to see who was throwing rocks. I guess I would have felt pretty dumb if it had turned out to be a vampire or a demon or something.” She was quiet a moment then said, “What can I do to help? What do you need?”

Buffy shrugged. “I really hadn't thought it through,” she admitted. I was thinking I needed someone with a car so I could get out of town, but then how does that work? I can't ask you to runaway and screw up your life just because I'm in trouble.”

Cordelia was quiet for a minute, then cursed under her breath. Because suddenly, she saw the situation for exactly what it was. “Yeah,” she said, “I think you can. I think you just did. Because nobody else can afford for you to get locked up either.

"Eat if you're hungry,” she added. “I've already had dinner, and I don't want to have to stop too soon. I'm just going to throw a few things in the car and switch license plates with Mom. She never drives, so she probably won't even notice. Do anything you need to do. I want to get going before I have the chance to think about it and change my mind.”

The plan was fairly simple they decided. Step one: drive for four or five hours, but not to anywhere as obvious as L.A. Far enough that they wouldn't be in the immediate search area but close enough to come back when Buffy was inevitably needed for something Hellmouth related. Step two: think of a better plan.

Neither girl asked the other what she was planning to do for money. Buffy figured Cordelia had enough cash in her purse for gas. When it came time to find a place to sleep... they could talk about it then she guessed. She knew Cordelia had better sense than to expect to use a credit card. If they had to sleep in the car one night until they could pawn something, it wasn't the end of the world. Which was kind of unfortunate, Buffy thought sardonically, because hey, 'the end of the world', that was really the only thing she was actually pretty good at.

“So,” Cordelia asked when they had left the lights of Sunnydale miles behind, heading east, towards the desert. “How pregnant are you?”

“I don't know,” Buffy admitted worriedly. “I think maybe two or three months but that doesn't even—”

“Oh, Wow!” Cordelia blurted, suddenly for a moment seeming more like her old judgmental self. “You and Giles, three months? Really? I mean the way you freaked out over Angel, I just assumed...”

“You assumed right!” Buffy corrected her pointedly, trying not to get indignant, realizing what she had said, what it must logically have sounded like. “This only happened the weekend before last. But apparently, one of my incredible superpowers in high speed mitosis. So, like I was _about_ to say, even if it seems like I'm only two months pregnant now, that still doesn't tell me how many months I have.”

“Buffy,” said Cordelia seriously, worriedly, on the verge of lecturing, in fact, “if you're really already at eight to twelve weeks, you don't have any _months._ Most places won't even do it after sixteen or eighteen weeks, and the rate your going, that might only be a few more days.”

Suddenly the atmosphere inside the car got very, very quiet. Buffy sat looking out the window, not saying anything while Cordelia absorbed what she wasn't saying.

“It's not like a completely linear thing, I don't think,” Buffy added after a while. “Giles said it goes fast, 'especially in the early stages', which makes me think it might slow down at some point, but I don't know when or how much. I mean, I don't think they cover this in 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' and the way Giles talks, I think all his handbook says about it is 'don't'.”

“There's a map in the glove box,” Cordelia said. “We need to figure out where we're going.”

*****

♫ The way you love. ♪

          ♫Have you got a name for it? ♪

                    ♫Cause I don’t understand it...♪

Willard sat on the familiar couch in the familiar club, listing to the familiar lame, depressing music and struggling with much, much too familiar feelings of regret and helplessness. He watched Amy dance, swaying to the slow, sad rhythm while she clung to some other guy. Some tall, beefy, no-neck idiot he'd never seen before.

He was almost sure that it was her fault things had ultimately not gone well with Xander's mom, almost sure that had been her intention, that she had deliberately said just enough about Mr. Harris's drinking and a few other touchy subjects to provoke a 'get out of my house reaction' without ever seeming to cross a clear line.

He was almost sure her hated her, and morosely certain that he was in love with her. He never would have let her turn him into a guy again if he wasn't. He hated being a guy, almost as much as he hated watching _that_ guy dance with Amy.

“I want to go,” he said half petulant and half pleading when she came back to the table for a drink between songs. “I don't feel all that well.”

“Really?” Amy said cruelly, laying her hand on top of his and leaning into his personal space, speaking softly, her mouth much too close to his, “You look great to me. I want to dance,” she added, having no trouble guessing what his real problem was, or one of them anyway. “You can't stop me by leaving. But you could stay and dance with me.... Or we could leave together.”

“Lets... just get out of here,” Willard said miserably. He could tell her not to stay when they got back to the house. Couldn't he? As it turned out, he couldn't.

“They seem pretty... scattered,” said Willow disappointedly, two hours later, looking at the map of Sunnydale spread on the floor between them.

“Well,” said Amy, philosophically, “at least that means they haven’t built much strength up, I guess.”

When Willard had suggested that Amy might want to go home, she had had other ideas. A few actually, before she'd hit on one he had been willing to go along with. Willard had not been able to resist the temptation to have Amy 'sleep over' and do magic together once it had been pointed out that it was something they could do to help Buffy and thereby prevent things like whatever had happened to Xander and Oz today. Guilt aligned with desire at that point, requiring that he let her stay, but he had held out for one condition. He had made her change him back into Willow first, knowing that, then, at least if he still had trouble resisting temptation, she wouldn't.

“Maybe...” Willow mused worriedly on the subject of vampires, snapping a few shots with her new digital camera before the colored lights could burn through the paper and blink out. Sure enough, the huge, undifferentiated patch of white light that marked the Hellmouth itself soon flared up like a candle, just as Katherine’s margin notes for this spell had warned that it might. Willow slipped on the Kevlar oven mitt lying next to her on the floor and beat the flames out of the whole map, leaving little burnt spots where all the demonic entities were located, pleased to note that none of them had burned all the way through the flattened cardboard box underneath. “...or maybe they’re out hunting,” she completed her thought. “We might have to try again in the daytime.”

“Well,” said Amy leaning in to point at the map, “there were quite a few purple ones scattered around the University. That could be a place to start anyway.” She leaned so close that her hair brushed against Willow arm, their faces inches apart.

Willow stood abruptly, pulling the memory card out of the camera. “I’d better get these loaded in the computer,” she said hurriedly, “then we can start analyzing them. There’s lots of good information here. On vampires and a lot of other demons.”

Amy sighed. She guessed, in a way, the fact that Willow was so uncomfortable around her was a good sign. It didn’t feel very good, but if Willow was having... feelings for her, even in her female form, then that should make it a little easier to convince her to be Willard more often. Shouldn’t it? And when Willard touched her, talked to her, smiled at her; comfortably or otherwise, that felt very good indeed.

‘What’s the matter with me?’ Amy thought, miserably. ‘How can I be in love with someone I made up?’ But then, that wasn’t quite the truth. Willard wasn’t really made-up. He _was_ Willow, plus and minus one key chromosome. No one could have been more shocked than Amy to find that that was all it took to transform her oldest friend into her perfect mate. Now here she was, invoking the Goddess Thesbia on behalf of oh-so-holier-than-thou Buffy, and planning to do it again, just to have an excuse to spend a little more time with the girl who was the man she loved.

Diana, of course, would understand, and so would most of the other gods and goddesses she dealt with, but pretty soon, Amy realized, she needed to do something really nice for Hecate, just to let her know there were still no other gods before her. A nice blood sacrifice should do it. Maybe that fat black rat in the window of the pet shop at the mall.

It was probably about time she introduced Willow to that side of things anyway. Amy had been reluctant to bring it up at first. So many people were spooked away from magic by the demands of the gods, especially when it came to animal sacrifice. But she thought Willow had enough of a taste for the Craft now that she would find it hard to give up.

Actually, Amy was surprised at how far Willow had been able to go in the magical arena without offering anything to the gods but the spells themselves. She wondered if maybe the gods were cutting Willow some slack on her behalf. She’d better do a little thankful chanting before bed, just in case, she decided. Either way, there was no denying that Willow was a talented witch, and apt to become very powerful.

Which, Amy reasoned, just made Willard even more of a catch, if she could hang on to him. And, Amy thought, she did know how to do that, if he would just stop fighting her long enough. Men were not _so_ different from gods, at least from what her mother had told her about both. To get what you wanted from them, you just had to give them what they wanted. Which was, most often, some positive act, some undeniable proof, of love.

Amy knew exactly what kind of proof Willard needed, even if he was too stubborn to see it yet.

 


	5. Phoenix

By the time they got to Fondren, Buffy was asleep. She kept right on sleeping while Cordelia filled up her tank, bought a month's worth of nonperishable groceries at convenience store prices, and drew three hundred dollars from each of four ATMs. There was no telling how long they might be gone.

She drove east, no destination as yet in mind. When Buffy was still asleep after the suggested driving time of four or five hours, Cordelia kept driving. The middle of the desert was a stupid place to stop, she decided. They at least needed to find someplace big enough that two strangers in town would not be immediately noticed by everyone. Given the direction they were already headed, the choice was obvious. Appropriately enough, just about the same time they got to Phoenix, the sun rose, and so did Buffy.

*****

The cavernous church echoed every tiny sound made by the small knot of tense agitated vampires. Kim still had not returned from the very simple mission of finding a few extra shovels and buckets for the digging, and was no where to be found in the tunnels or the school above.

“Perhaps, she has lost her way,” The Brother suggested. There was something slightly ironic, slightly knowing in the look that he gave Spike as he folded his hands and bowed to him slightly, respectfully. A smile played at the edge's of the dead priest's lips. “I am, of course, your humble servant,” he said, “regardless of what is required of me.”

“It is only seven days until the moon,” Edwards pointed out. Apropos of everything, but nothing particular to the moment. Spike just looked at him, less response than a shrug, but in the same vein. “We need more,” he elaborated, “And soon. We need the mixture to... set somewhat before the blood is added. We need time to chant over it. We've got to kill more vampires!”

“Are you volunteering?” Dursilla asked. There was a hint in her voice that she might not be quite innocent enough to honestly have hope that that was what he'd meant, but only just. As for concern about whether he planned to go on existing or not, there was none.

A brief moment of dark fantasy ran through Edwards' mind. In it, he saw himself pushing Drusilla, Spike and The Brother into the pool, and Angel too, for what little he was worth. He saw himself using the mud of their dust to further the ritual that would restore his Zanya to health. He saw her looking into his eyes once again with comprehension. Recognition. Gratitude. Pride. Love.

But fantasy was all it was, all it could have ever been. Drusilla was far stronger than he, and Spike was a better fighter, even in his weakened condition. The Brother, for that matter, was broad, strong and no fool. Killing him would have been no easy matter. That was always the risk in attacking either a veteran vampire or one who had known the score and gotten a little practice in life.

What they really needed were newbies. Innocents.

Drusilla leapt at the air and grabbed a handful of aether, smiling her feline smile. Edwards had the eery sensation that she had snatched his thought from him. Which he'd have said was ridiculous, except...

“Boys and Girls!” she cried aloud, in a tone of gleeful realization and agreement. “They're going to dance their last dance with us. When the dance of the dead is done! They will fall and rise and drown to ashes by the reel we play out for them. And then, Dianna will come and bid my Angel 'rise and walk.' And we will dwell in the House of my Lord forever!”

*****

“Bloody Hell,” Rupert Giles groaned as he broke the surface of consciousness and had to face the face that swam into view before his eyes. He was back in hospital, staring up at his father. “What day is it now?” he asked.

“Thursday, the 5th of March,” Andrew Giles assured him. “You've only been here about eight hours, this time. I arrived about two hours ago.”

Rupert's brow furrowed. “But how did you get here so quickly?” he asked. It was the drugs, Andrew realized. Whatever the hospital had given him for pain and sleep. They were making him, in a word, dull.

“I started out shortly after you were discharged the first time,” Andrew explained patiently. His tone was crisp, businesslike, but he was gravely concerned and he supposed it showed. Or it would have if Rupert hadn't been so unfocused. “I wanted to see that you were well after your little... automotive misadventure. Besides,” he added, seeing no sense in delaying or dissembling, “I've been hearing things that trouble me. I wanted to determine the truth of the matter for myself.”

“I'm quite alright,” Giles assured his father, acting as though he hadn't understood the second half of his stated reasoning for flying halfway around the planet. “Or at any rate,” he added, in response to the older man's very skeptical frown, “I will be in a few days. It's nothing you need to worry yourself about.”

The heaviness of the silence between them made him feel that there was something more he was expected to say, but he felt it safest not to assume too much about what that might be. “Everything here is under control,” he assured his father, looking him very firmly in the eye for a full ten seconds before fumbling at his nonexistent shirt pocket for glasses that were not there.

“Is it in deed?” said Andrew tartly, growing just a bit impatient. “I take it you're not aware then, that your Slayer is being sought, once again, by the police?”

“Good Lord!” Giles gasped, sitting up much straighter in bed. “For what? Since when?” His more than Watcherly concern was written all over his face. It was really quite unseemly.

“Officially, for violating her terms of release from the local Youth Court, by breaking curfew,” Andrew explained grimly. “ _Un_ officially,” he added pointedly, when he could see that his temporarily dull witted son was starting to relax into the assumption that Buffy had merely been spotted on patrol and it would all work itself out, “She's run off from her mother, who wants to have her involuntarily admitted for mental health treatment, though all the family has been able to articulate as a justification is that they've had a row over that fact that she's pregnant and stubbornly attached to a much older man, whom they suspect of being involved in several murders.”

Rupert gave his father a guarded, appraising, _defensive_ but nevertheless guilty look. “I don't suppose you'd be using quite that tone if they'd made mention of Angelus as the object of her... attachment,” he observed at last, lowering his eyes.

“The only reason the police are not here at this moment questioning you as to her whereabouts is that you've such a fine alibi witness in this Mr. Snyder,” Andrew confirmed.

“Oh God!” Rupert groaned. “Just what I need.”

“Well you needn't worry about them letting him in on any secrets about your... improper relationship with Ms. Summers—”

“Impro—” Rupert started to object to the characterization, “You're one to—”

“Seeing as how,” Andrew raised his voice and finished in spite of him, “the whole town has already adopted the notion that you've gotten her pregnant as a received truth!” Rupert's mouth snapped shut. “Well?!” Andrew demanded.

“Yes, alright!” Rupert admitted agitatedly. “I'm responsible for her... condition. As to where anyone got the idea that I'd killed anyone... I hope it goes without saying, but I certainly haven't. Lately.”

He mumbled on the last word, dropping his eyes. The way he said it, it was supposed to be humorous stab at himself. It wasn't quite. The oh so very tired way he pressed his fingertips to his temples, the slight shaking of his head, made it clear that his underlying sense of deep self-condemnation was no joke.

Andrew successfully suppressed a sigh that probably would have come out more wistful and less exasperated than it should have been, a fact that he found a bit embarrassing as well as exacerbating in its own right. Evan as a young child, Rupert had always been difficult to discipline precisely _because_ he always seemed to feel so terrible when he had misbehaved. Those big sad, sufferinging-but-not-complaining-because-I-know-I-deserve-to-suffer eyes!

Andrew always found himself wanting to ease the situation by letting the boy off the hook. The fact that Marjorie had always been so hard on Rupert, venting her venomous jealously of his dead mother upon him, had not helped the situation. Andrew always felt as though he needed to compensate for his wife's unreasonable rages at the poor child.

But blast it all, he wasn't a child! Andrew had to remind himself. Not anymore. He was a forty-seven year-old man, who had just missed his last pass at a 'he may have been a bit wild in his younger days but...' reputation. If he truly 'felt so terrible' and was really 'a good man underneath it all', then why didn't he get his id in check and grow up already!

Besides, there were more important matters to attend to than Rupert's emotional state. Or Andrew's for that matter. “How long has this... affair been going on?” he asked his son, trying once again, with some success, to project calm and detachment.

“It was just the one encounter,” Rupert said quietly, looking down at his hands. “The evening of the 20th of February. I've tried ever since to encourage her to... do the right thing. Or... well the _smart_ thing, at any rate,” he half corrected himself. “But every time I try to broach the subject... all she wants to do is talk about is true love, miracles and when might be a good time to... rekindle our... erm 'relationship'.”

The 20th of February. Only thirteen days. That was cause to be relieved at least, Andrew realized. The first two or three days hardly counted. That was a matter cells finding one another, uniting not dividing. As for the ten days or so that followed.... Assuming that Buffy had not suffered any serious injury during that time, which would have catalyzed an out of control Slayer Healing Response, (and Rupert's reports did not suggest that she had) then her pregnancy would have progressed at no more than three or four times the normal rate for the first six or eight of those ten days and should already be slowing down considerably.

Her gestational development should be at roughly four to six weeks post ovulation and progressing at perhaps one week for every four or five days. Which meant there were most likely still six to ten calendar weeks in which something could be done to remedy the situation without too much legal, medical or practical difficulty. Other than the practical difficulty inherent in convincing the infamously unruly Slayer to do anything she didn't really want to do.

“Well,” said Andrew grimly, fighting to keep the relief out of his voice, “and what have you done to disabuse her of this fantasy?”

Rupert lay back on his pillows and closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and once again shook his head slightly, a relatively dramatic emotional display by Watcher standards. “Next to nothing,” he admitted. “Bloody hell, I told her that I love her! I'm pretty sure I do, but... She doesn't seem to understand that that doesn't necessarily mean that we 'belong' together or that everything is going to be alright.”

This time, Andrew did sigh in exasperation. Maybe it wasn't _just_ the drugs. “Of course not, you idiot,” he explained indignantly, “She's a seventeen-year-old girl. You had sex with her. You got her pregnant. And instead of immediately and consistently claiming it was a mistake, you told her that you _love_ her? What's she supposed to think!?!

"At seventeen, there's no such thing as love that _doesn't_ conquer all! There's only valiant heroes, vile seducers and perhaps, if you are very, very lucky, blithering fools who can be partially forgiven for having made terrible mistakes under extreme circumstances! Well, now you've gone and blown the best available option, I'm afraid, Rupert, that the Council is going to have to make you the villain of this piece if we are ever going to get our Slayer back in line!”

Rupert sat up and stared at his father, a look of shock and horror on his face. “What are you saying?” he demanded.

Andrew was overstating the case a little, and he knew it. Dahlia certainly hadn't gone to pieces when her whirlwind affair with her Watcher's son and resultant pregnancy had not lead to marriage or even to more than a few weeks of conventional, active motherhood. And she had been a good deal younger than Buffy at the time, only fifteen, he guiltily reminded himself.

Of course, that whole business had happened so quickly that it was rather surreal for everyone. Thanks to being badly beaten by a couple of not-long-for-the-world Fyarl Demons only a couple of days after their ill-fated tryst, Dahlia had gone from virgin to mother in just twelve weeks.  But of course, his possible underestimation of the ability of young women to bear up under the weight of emotionally difficult realities was not the source of Rupert's confusion or distress.

Andrew walked over and looked out the window, turning his back on his son, not sure if it was anger or pity he was trying to stifle by avoiding those anguished eyes. “I'm saying,” he enunciated crisply, “that as of right now, you are relieved of your duties as Primary Field Watcher. You are ordered to report to Council Headquarters in London as soon as you are medically cleared to travel so that you may be formally disciplined and permanently reassigned.”

For a long time, Rupert said nothing in response. Andrew fought the urge to try to comfort or reassure him. It was for the best, he reasoned with himself, not only for the Slayer, and for the world, but for Rupert as well. If he wasn't reassigned now, he was liable to get himself killed or fired within the next few months.

One had hardly to look at him to see that, under these circumstances, Cruciamentum was a test he simply could not pass. Besides, if this Buffy girl wasn't smacked in the face with the reality of her predicament, and soon, and _hard..._ Well, it was too much to hope that she would handle the situation as well as Dahlia had.

“What if I refuse to go?” Rupert asked. His voice was tight, controlled, but clearly angry.

“Then you will have to be dealt with,” Andrew said coolly. “One way or another.” He couldn't quite bring himself to say 'one way or The Other', though there was no mistaking that his meaning included that. What he'd said was threat enough to someone who had had as much experience 'dealing' with people and being 'dealt' with by and for the Council as Rupert had.

As it was, Andrew couldn't leave such dangerous words hanging in the air. He had to fill the silence, to try to explain.... No—he would not fool himself, not in this extremity—to try to _justify_ such a threat against his own son.

“Rupert, the Council cannot allow this to keep happening,” he remonstrated. “If your Slayer bears a child, she'll be the fourth to do so in a scant half century, after nearly two hundred years without a similar incident! The implications...”

Details jostled one another in Andrews mind, demanding to come forward and be indignantly expressed. Details like the fact that those four had happened to include every Slayer to attain the age of twenty-one since his son's birth. Or the related fact that, within the last two years, the Inner Council had actually had to _suppress_ not one but two Enrollment Theses, which had independently reached the conclusion that age related 'outside cultural influences' were now the strongest bar to Slayer procreation and that, for 'longer lived Slayers', an outright acceptance of motherhood would soon be established!

One of the two impertinent little snots had actually had the nerve to suggest that Council policy heretofore had been a 'mere reflection' of the taboos against unwed motherhood within the 'larger culture.' The other was worse still, suggesting that the 'current unspoken acceptance of motherhood as a real possibility for Slayers', particularly (but not necessarily, see bloody footnote!) 'later in life', was part of the 'larger trend towards fuller integration of the Slayer into mainstream cultural roles'. In recognition of the 'obvious benefits' of social integration to Slayer wellbeing and performance, she (of course she!) had sited the achievements of none other than The Great Buffy Summers!

It hadn't stopped there. There had been bloody _suggestions_ for dealing with the 'inevitable consequences' of this 'emerging relaxation of Slayer marginalization' during this 'exciting but potentially problematic period of transition' as the Council 'learned to adapt' to 'meeting the needs' of a 'more liberated' breed of Slayer!

The girl had even deigned to make a comparison to the early centuries of the Council in London before the 'late Classical view of womanhood' was 'subsumed by the medieval resurgence of traditional patriarchal standards' casting these later Slayers (in contrast to Flavia, the Matriarch of the Council upon its establishment in London) 'rather in the role of a daughter than a wife'. Finally, she had gone on to claim that this 'trend' had been accentuated by the 'artificial suppression of life expectancy' for all but the best and brightest Slayers due to the introduction of the Rite of Cruiamentum in the later part of the eighth century. She had stopped short, of course, of advocating the abolition of said 'greatly respected ritual', but you could _hear_ her stopping short.

“And this time, for the first time,” Andrew railed, sweeping aside the general milieu to focus on the more personal aspects for this particular crisis. “Her own Watcher will be responsible! That's approaching a level of toleration that amounts to a change in policy! A change that casts everything we know about Slayer and Watcher roles and relationships—everything we've spent the last sixteen centuries reestablishing—into doubt. Surely, you must realize that I, of all people, cannot be responsible for that!”

“Humph,” Rupert snorted. “I was wondering how long it would take you to come round to that! How is it that you always seem to think that your own... transgressions give you additional moral authority in condemning mine!?!”

“You want to call me a hypocrite?” Andrew challenged, turning to face his son again at last. He was no longer shouting, exactly, but his eyes and voice burned with quite rage born of fear, humiliation, and guilt. “Fine, I'm a hypocrite! I come from a long line of very well respected hypocrites.

"Our House is legendary for repaired reputations, for men and women who have overcome scandals of every imaginable sort to go on to do great things and to be great leaders in Council. It's been a 'joke' in Council circles ever since I can remember that you can't be Enrolled as a Watcher of the House of Weregelder unless you've first been the cause of a truly appalling scandal.

"My mother, the first and to date only, woman ever to sit as an Equal of the Inner Council, spent the first half of her career being ridiculed as Peter Travers' _Other_ Wife! And yet, a mere twenty-four years after I was born, she had built up enough gravitas and goodwill to ride out the scandal your mother and I caused by having you. Without losing her Seat or her influence.

"And I, in turn, by the time I had to plead for your protection from the Laws of England for no less than two so called murders, had the clout and dignity to do so effectively and to keep you eligible for Enrollment. Have you never asked yourself how that works exactly!

“The secret to 'repent and keep the Crown,' my son, is that you have to stay repentant,” Andrew went on, an infuriatingly pedantic note creeping into his tone again, “You can't just keep piling up 'isolated incidents' or turning a blind eye when others do so. You have to commit to the idea that what you have done is wrong and that everyone who follows in your footsteps _deserves_ to be harshly punished, even if you are occasionally able to make sure that they are not. To offer them mercy from a position of moral strength.

"But there are tricks and turns to that as well, you know. You have to be just harsh enough! It killed me, to have to give you over to Quentin's 'rehabilitation' program, as if I didn't think you'd been sufficiently humbled and chastened after that Watts chap died from what was really nothing more than a botched exorcism, to sit there and smile while everyone kept calling you a murderer. And then... with the way _that_ business itself turned out...”

“Yes, I can see how that would have been hard for you,” Rupert sneered. “Having to watch me suffer(!) You've always been quite a martyr in that regard.”

“My point,” Andrew nearly hissed, “is that this is one scandal we have got to shut down, and quickly. Your reputation is already beyond salvaging. Regardless of the true circumstances, the official version of both the Watts and the Font incidents is that you overstepped your bounds to the point of murder. And while you were officially cleared of any wrongdoing in the deaths of Ms. Cole and Ms. Laughton.... Given your age and experience, I can't reasonably argue that you deserve yet another 'last chance' at respectability.

“You're not coming back from this one, Rupert. Quiet disgrace, a lifetime of uneventful but useful work in the archives, that's about the best you can hope for no matter what we do. If you try to stay here and keep... mucking about in the Slayer's life... I'm sorry Rupert, but I'm not going to let you destroy this family or drive a wedge between the Slayer and the Council. As an Equal of the Inner Council, I have the welfare of the whole human race to keep in mind. And as the Head of our House, as a father even, I have the future of my other children and grandchildren to think of.”

“Ah yes,” Rupert whispered with a small snort of bleak amusement, “It always comes down to that, doesn't it? Your sordid past still getting in the way of your perfect family after all these years. Well, thank you for coming all this way to share your concerns, Father, but I believe I can save you the trouble of having to 'discipline me' at my age. I hereby resign from the Council, effective immediately. Which, as far as I am concerned, concludes our business. My love, as ever, to Marjorie and the children,” he added with stiff, formal irony.

“Rupert, don't be a fool!” Andrew warned, horrified.

“Would you rather I were a coward?” Rupert shot back, very nearly getting to his feet before residual dizziness forced him to sit back down on the bed for a moment. “You've just instructed me to abandon a young woman who is carrying my child so that you can use the emotional devastation of my betrayal to force her to have an abortion! Knowing that that is not what she wants in any sense!”

“Rupert the fate of the world—!” Andrew started in.

“Oh, sod the world!” Rupert shouted back, anger forcing him to sudden realization. “It seems to have a habit of turning despite us all, and even if it doesn't, I won't be your 'vile seducer' for all that!

"I've failed as a Watcher; you are right there. I can close that book at last. But I have, in the meantime, committed myself to Buffy, in deed if not in so many words, and I have responsibilities to her that I shall have to see though, regardless of the outcome. If you've really managed to become so... repentant in your old age that you can't even understand that any longer, I don't want to know about!

“As for my being 'dealt with'” Rupert continued crisply, “I intend to give you every reason to understand that there is less risk involved in simply letting me be. I'm not going to interfere with Buffy's Slaying. Far from it. In fact, I am going to do everything in my power to help her out of this latest difficulty with her family and to see to it that she has whatever support she needs to continue in her destined task, child or no child, whether my disgrace thereby is quiet or not!”

Suddenly, as if the wind had changed direction, Rupert was railing against the central themes of his own recent complaints about Buffy's inability to appreciate their situation for the disaster that it was. “...And as for her ability to accept my help, and on what terms, it occurs to me, rather late perhaps, that we may all be giving her too little credit.

"Buffy has proven more than once that she is not a fool. She may yet prove that she is no child either! And if she _doesn't_ yet understand that men come in more subtle shades than Charming Princes and Smiling Villains, then perhaps it's time someone taught her that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of by Walt Disney! I seem to recall my mother understood as much by the time you were through instructing her.

“Meanwhile, if the Council wishes to _murder_ me for behaving no differently than their own Glorious Leader,” he continued to rage, getting to his feet at last, “You might first ask yourselves how _that_ is likely to be viewed through the black and white lenses of immaturity that you assume she wears!

"Go on! Cast yourselves as the hideous witch hiding in the tower to toss the prince down among the thorns and drives him into the desert! I'll wager you've found yourselves one princess who'll do more than weep about it! How'd you think that's likely to affect the 'fate of the world'?! Well!??!”

*****

“You're Nuts!” Cordelia declared, somewhere between indignant and honestly disbelieving. “You _cannot_ be serious about staying here!” she argued, “Just look at it!”

Buffy had to admit that she had a valid point. The carpet was stained, the the bedspreads threadbare. The room stank of stale cigaret smoke. The two burners and a mini-fridge kitchenette didn't have a microwave. It didn't even have a table, just two bar stools at the counter that crowned the half wall separating it from the bedroom.

But what Buffy had to admit to herself, she didn't have to admit to Cordelia. “It's $99.00 a week,” she reminded her friend instead. “It's 'ready to check in', not 'come back after two,' and it's the only place we've stopped that doesn't require a credit card. Plus we just paid for two weeks in advance. So unless you've got a magic purse that automatically dispenses money, yes, we're staying here.”

To emphasize the point, Buffy dumped Cordelia's two huge suitcases unceremoniously into the middle of the floor. Cordelia heaved an unnaturally heavy sigh, rolled her eyes, and dropped her overnight bag into a corner.

“Whatever...” she said, just a little petulantly, but more or less resignedly, unfurling the massive slip cover she held under her other arm and rapidly wrapping her chosen bed like some kind of housekeeping ninja. Flopping down onto the thus swaddled bed, the one furtherest from the door, she added, “I'm exhausted. I just want to take a shower and then sleep for ten hours.”

“Dibs on the bathroom,” Buffy said, not really kidding at all.

Cordelia made an unpleasant face. “Hurry up about it,” was all she said.

Buffy didn't begrudge her her ranklyness there. She'd have bet money Cordelia had not graced a gas station restroom with her presence, not even on such a long journey.

"I'll be quick," Buffy promised. But the more than slightly bloated feeling she had in her midsection carried with it a sense of disgust and apprehension that kind of made her doubt her own words.

Buffy's sympathy, apprehension and disgust all deepened a little when she actually saw the bathroom itself, all tiny tiles with mildew in between. In the desert, no less! This place really was a dump. Buffy just hoped it was a sufficiently secluded dump.  A place her mom and the Summers House Detective actually wouldn't find for at least two weeks.

While she was thinking these thoughts, Buffy had been preparing to have a seat on the not-actively-filthy-looking-but-not-sealed-or-anything toilet, ready to get that necessity over with. In the meantime, she had tossed her heavy, sweaty gym shirt onto the floor and was feeling delightfully free of it. But as soon as she sat down and therefor had a lap, she could feel and _see_ what was sitting _in_ her lap, her now (for the first time) undeniably round belly! It poked out so far that her much too tight undershirt rolled up over it.

'Holy Crap!' Buffy almost gasped, but didn't, because before the words could make it to her lips, they gave way to a small, sharp scream. Her fantastic new belly didn't just sit there. It moved. Or more accurately, something was visibly moving inside it. Something like a person! Something like a tiny Buffy-Giles hybrid reality.

“Holy Crap!” Buffy said, almost shouted. How was it possible that something she'd already accepted (something she had seen pink-line proof of, had told herself that she one hundred percent believed, and had in fact acted upon her knowledge of in making real life decisions) could suddenly become so much _more real_?!

“Buffy?” Cordelia called, her voice taunt with anxiety, shockingly near panic, in fact, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing!” Buffy assured her emphatically, guiltily, as she finished and flushed and hurriedly pulled her clothes up.

Cordelia wasn't buying. She was rattling the knob and impatiently pointing out that Buffy had cried out in what sounded to her like horror, and didn't she realize how scary that was for a regular person to hear?

“I'm sorry!” Buffy called back at her through the door, sounding more frustrated than apologetic. Still with the knob rattling. Cordelia continued her relentless insistence that she had heard what she had heard and that it meant something.

Buffy could not deal with the motel nastiness of walking out there with her very unwashed feeling hands to wash them in front of Cordelia. Instead, she knelt by the tub and quickly washed them. Both the kneeling and the getting up were a little more complicated than she had ever remembered them being, but it was still a thing easily done in a matter of seconds.

Which was a good thing, because Cordelia went ballistics when she heard the bathtub running. “If there's really nothing wrong,” she whine-scold-sneered, “come out already. I have to go!”

“I am!” Buffy shouted back crossly, shrugging back into her baggy exercise shirt and pulling at it selfconsciously around the belly area, trying to convince herself that it was a least a little hard to notice if you weren't really looking.

Not stopping to think too much about the significance of the fact that the knob continued to rattle, feeling it as a spur to action without considering its obvious implications, Buffy jerked the door open. The metal on metal sound of the flimsy lock snapping in half was lost in the violent, shouting, cursing chaos of Cordelia being pulled off her feet and into the bathroom floor, where she landed in a tangled heap.

“Um, Ow(!)” she huffed, but as she contemplated her surroundings, she added, “And eww!” sounding both put-upon and embarrassed. A second or so passed, Buffy wasn't sure what to do. “Um, you could, you know, get out now,” Cordelia suggested, hostilely, starting to pick herself up off the floor.

“Right, sorry,” Buffy mumbled, ducking her head and turning to go. But as Cordelia tried to put her weight onto her right hand in the process of getting to her feet, her hiss of sucked in breath told Buffy that something was wrong.

“I'm fine,” Cordelia insisted hotly, when Buffy offered to help her up. “Just get out!” she demanded. “I need to take a shower!” She braced herself on her left arm and got up, glaring.

Nobody but nobody could glare like Cordelia Chase. An angry, wronged Buffy could take it and even hold her own in the giving back. But a guilty, confused, exhausted Buffy could not. Buffy trained her eyes on her shoes, went back in the bedroom and carefully closed the door, listening as the knob no longer clicked.

Buffy glanced randomly around the room, in search of a distraction from everything that was, in search of a clue as to what on earth she ought to do now. Her eyes lighted on the telephone that sat on the tiny particle board nightstand between the two beds.

Giles had no idea where she was. She had no idea what was going on with him, whether he was safe (for a Sunnydale adjusted value of 'safe') or in jail, or in danger of going to jail, or of losing his job. Because of her. Cordelia (big thanks for helping Buffy) had no way to even tell her parents she was okay. Not that she acted like it bothered her the least little bit, but Buffy figured it did, like it would anybody. And then of course there was Xander. And Willow.

And then Buffy smiled, feeling something that was almost like relief, like a relaxation from a crushing state of oppressive panic to a merely crippling state of unrelenting stress. Because thinking of Willow made her think of something that was not a telephone. Well, not exactly.

*****

“There, you see,” said Willow, being stubbornly cheerful, “They're a lot more clumped up in the daytime! About four to six to a nest, plus lots of couples. Still, nothing like when The Master was around, thank God. That's going to be a lot of help to Buffy...” There was an awkward pause, and Willow snapped some pictures to cover it before mumbling, “When she gets back.”

“ _If_ she comes back,” Amy corrected. “Willow, there's a warrant out for her arrest. Because her _mom_ reported her for skipping bail. While she was trying to have her checked into a 'facility' against her will. I mean, if your _mom_ is out to get you, believe me, that when you need to stay gone.”

Willow turned her head away, fiddling with her camera. Amy felt a stab of guilt. Of course, Willow didn't have that problem. Just the opposite. And she was blaming herself extra hard. Because she was Willow. “We have to get going,” Amy said gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. “You don't want to be late your first day at a new school and get the Juvie folks on your back.”

The doorbell rang. The two girls exchanged worried, puzzled looks. It was not yet eight a.m. When it turned out to be the Juvenile Probation lady, with two policemen in tow, Willow thought it must be something to do with Buffy. It wasn't. They were there because of a 'reported incident' of trespassing and a possible 'weapons violation'. They were there to look for a possible missing gun.

*****

Andrew delayed what he had to do next. He delayed even admitting to himself that he knew what it was he had to do. It was too ignoble, to painful to swallow.

Instead, he went to breakfast at a place that was called “I”-HOP even though there was nothing in the least international about it. The food was heavy, sweet and adequate if the service and atmosphere left something to be desired... in much the same way that eating in a petrol station would have.

Well, it was still better than many a mean place in which he had eaten or slept in the wilds and wastes of North Africa. War was war after all. At least this... caricature of a sleepy American bedroom village seemed to be a relatively clean and comfortable hell.

Andrew made the meal last as long as possible. He had a full breakfast, including meat, eggs, both toast and pancakes, fried potatoes, fresh fruit, juice, coffee and some sort of watery corn porridge that tasted like chalk with butter. When it was over he sat and drank coffee. Slowly. More than one cup. More than a couple.

At last he he had no choice. Considering the position his son had put him in, considering that Rupert _was_ his son and (what was more) Dahlia's, it had to be done.

“How does the idea of an indefinite medical leave at half base pay strike you?” he asked without preamble, walking into Rupert's hospital room.

“I believe it would suit my purpose perfectly,” Rupert replied coolly. Even though he was polite about it and didn't gloat, Andrew had the galling sense that he had half expected this capitulation. No doubt based upon his past experience with his father's threats and attempts at discipline.

The truth was, Andrew Giles was more than capable of dealing with anyone on Earth. Except his own son. And Rupert was his _own_ , in a way that Marjorie's children never really could be. There was something about the bond between a mother and an infant... something that did not have a wonderful lot to do with the biology of that relation.

*****

Willow tried hard to appear appropriately distressed, but she was already cried out on the subject. Sheila was 'unresponsive', everyone kept repeating. 'Yeah?' thought a tiny, horrible part of Willow, one of the parts that made her hate herself, 'So what else is new?' But everyone was rushing around blaring sirens, taking into walky-talkies, bearing Sheila out the door via stretcher, hooking up an IV rack. Just exactly as if this were an actual emergency.

People were asking Willow questions, but Amy was answering them. No one seemed to notice or mind. Thank God she hadn't thought to glamour herself into Sheila's likeness before Willow had answered the door. That might have been a little more difficult to explain.

On the plus side (the miserable, guilt-ridden, want-to-stab-yourself-in-the-hand-with-a-fork-so-you-can-suffer-as-you-so-justly-deserve kind of plus side) no one was blaming Willow for any of this. They were checking Sheila's bedclothes, dresser, nightstand, and medicine cabinet for drugs, wanting to know if she was taking anything, if she was drinking a lot, if she'd been depressed for any reason.

“Of course she was depressed!” Willow nearly shouted, surprising everyone, including herself. “My dad was just murdered two weeks ago!” Everyone stopped and stared. “Not even two weeks,” she mumbled, eyes downcast, looking and sounding dejected but feeling angry. Powerless. At fault. “Not even two weeks,” she repeated in a bitter whisper, fighting tears, “What do they expect from us?”

There was a short moment of deep silence. When nothing much looked like happening because of it, everyone started to get on about the business of dealing with the total collapse of the Rosenberg family. A policeman was opening his mouth to ask Amy who he could call to be responsible for Willow. The EMTs were halfway out the door with Sheila, when just as suddenly as before, Willow cried out, “What do you expect from us!?!” As she so spoke, Willow lifted her arms to the sky, staring though the ceiling. “Great God! What do you want from me!” 


	6. A Different Sort of Bird Altogether

“Already on her way?” Andrew asked his colleague again, puzzled, not sure he had heard correctly over the sound of the fat, rapid raindrops pounding in the glass of the phone booth just outside the hospital. But soon he received confirmation enough that his ears had not deceived him.

Ah, yes. Signs and portents. Of course. Zabuto was forever seeing signs and portents that the Council knew nothing about until he was through doing whatever he independently decided to do about it.

He was, if possible, even more of a 'lone wolf' in the field than Rupert. He had his own sources down there in the Caribbean, evidently, and his own island methods. If he didn't know any better, Andrew thought, he might have believed the man an Ezarian rather than a Jcobean, what with all his air of secrets and mysteries.

Lightning flashed and crackled up, down and sideways among the dark and lowering clouds, followed by peels of rolling thunder. Andrew could almost have believed this sudden storm an ominous portent, a sign of great and as yet still unexpected troubles to be weathered.

When Zabuto finished with reciting a few vague, shadowy details of his own choosing about the crisis he saw looming, Andrew explained as much as he wanted to be known about the circumstances of Buffy's absence and of Rupert's proposed medical leave. Zabuto seemed appropriately concerned and offered to follow Kendra on the next flight so as not to leave her Watcherless in Sunydale for too long.

“No,” Andrew assured him, “That won't be necessary. I've no pressing business in London at the moment and I've made plans to stay here in Sunnydale until this business with Rupert and his Slayer can be sorted out. Granted it has been a long time, but I think I might just be able to manage acting as a field Watcher for a few days.”

“Yes. I'm quite sure,” Zabuto answered in a way that only subtly implied that he was no such thing, which impertinence Andrew politely chose to ignore. Honestly, it'd be a cold day in Hell when Andrew Giles couldn't manage to shepherd a reasonably competent Slayer trough something as simple as finding and putting a stop to a nest of vampires performing an arcane ritual to increase their power.

It wasn't as though these vampires ever came up with anything new or interesting. Whatever they were planning was no doubt well documented in the literature. The only possible trick would be discovering which old standard they had in mind to play, which could usually be worked out well enough through indirect observation of their preparations and a little applied astrology.

Frequently, it wasn't even necessary to know precisely what they were up to. As a counter strategy, killing all the leaders and/or enough of the followers usually worked well enough regardless. Often, one or two casualties were enough to disperse even a very large nest. If there was one thing that most vampires were not known for, it was solidarity. When the going got rough, it wasn't as though they'd be staying the course for the sake of their friends and loved ones.

*****

Ruth Greenly awoke. That wasn't quite the word for it, but it was close. Arose might have been closer except that she couldn't get up. Couldn't move at all in fact. She was laying on her stomach. She was paralyzed. She shouldn't have been surprised by that, Ruth realized. She remembered her back breaking, her spine snapping under her own weight as she hung in chains from the wall, barely able to brush the floor with the tips of her toes.

She remembered being savaged by those creatures; watching Karl die. She could smell them all around her still. They had not left. They were waiting, watching her, exited by her revival. Though she had become exactly what they were, they remained hostile, predatory.

Ruth growled and snarled with inhuman rage and frustration. She gnashed her sharp teeth together. She bit her tongue, drawing blood. It soothed her a little, made it easier to try to think. Somehow she knew that her body was now strong enough to crush her enemies and grind their bones to dust. If only she could have made her limbs obey her.

Suddenly, as if a nightmare had followed her into the waking world, or a demon back from hell, Ruth heard a horrible, horrified, enraged screeching. It was Karl! Or something that sounded like him. Ruth felt a drop of liquid acid singe her cheek. The screeching grew louder, more inhuman. She opened her eyes for a moment, but quickly closed them again as more burning droplets began to rain around her. She had seen enough.

Karl. How he struggled in the water. How he thrashed. A part of her though it was funny. Mostly she was surprised how little she felt one way or another.

How many times? Ruth wondered. How many times had she dreamed she would rescue him, would save him from something as simple as failure and over work and disappointment or as menacing as a fire, or an earthquake or a school board investigation into everything he was really up to? And he would see her worth. He would love her. Even the way she was. And if she was not what women were supposed to be, if she still didn't look or think or act like a 'real girl', she would be his and that would be close enough.

Well here he was.  Suffering.  Dying. The man she had supposed she loved. And it hardly mattered, for his sake at least, that she could not lift a finger to help him. She could not lift her heart to help him. She doubted she would have bothered.

It seemed silly now, to have wanted his love so much, flawed as she had always known he was. Ruth didn't want anything anymore. She dreaded the pain, when she heard the vicious, blond vampire leader say, “Okay, time for Mobey Dick.” And she was soon proved right in dreading it.

But as for desire to live, regret that she was almost done existing, she felt next to nothing.

*****

They had to call a second ambulance. They called it a dissociative psychotic episode. They gave Willow something to calm her down until they could tie her down, and then they took her away.

Amy didn't know what to do. Physically, the drugs and the straps and the four large men from the Fire Department had subdued Willow. But the storm she had called down from heaven continued to rage with gale force winds, punishing rains, and great burst of lightning.

Whatever they had pumped into Willow's body, Amy knew her mind and more importantly her heart were anything but subdued. Her pain shrieked and clattered and tore its own artificial night asunder.

Amy felt terrified, utterly helpless. She was completely certain that this storm was just beginning. One way or another, there was worse weather to come.

*****

Buffy didn't bring her idea up to Cordelia right away. Cordelia was piqued and Buffy was too tired and crabby herself to deal with it. At least, from what she could gather, she hadn't hurt Cordelia too badly. Her hand was bruised and swollen a little and her pride a little more. It was nothing she wouldn't live over in either case, and there was nothing Buffy could really do about it anyway.

There was no sense discussing it. The two girls chirped a few on-the-surface-pleasant words at each other, then Cordelia lay down and turned to face the far wall. She was asleep by the time Buffy had finished her breakfast and taken a shower.

Buffy was still so tired that she thought she might go right to sleep too, even after sleeping all night in the car and only waking up a very few hours ago. But there was something keeping Buffy awake. Something or (ever more accurately) someone, was rolling around, squirming, kicking and apparently jogging inside her abdomen.

She tried ignoring it. But it didn't seem to want to be ignored. She tried patting it, but that made her feel supremely weird and didn't seem to calm things down any. Instead, she sat up, got the phone book (which fortunately turned out to be for the current quarter) out of the nightstand drawer and started searching the yellow pages.

And there it was. Only one in the area, but there was one. And it had paid for a full page grand opening ad, recently enough to give some assurance that it was still a going concern, that it wouldn't have shut down yet even if the Phoenix metro area turned out to be not so ready for the techno-age. Or if the strip mall across from the Scottsdale Medical Center turned out to be a bad location. For now at least, it should still be there: The E-Z Bean Cybercafé, a place to 'feed your net need' for the low low price of $6.00 an hour.

Buffy called them. Yes, they were still open. From six a.m. to nine p.m. Monday through Saturday. Buffy looked at the cheap, generic digital alarm clock next to her motel bed. It was a little past nine in the morning. Still plenty of time a get a good 'night's' worth of sleep and get a message to Willow and thence to Giles & Xander.

Buffy glanced over at Cordelia. She was dead to the world, her breathing deep and sonorous, almost but not quite snoring. She was still lying on top of that silly slip cover, dressed in warm pajamas and covered up with a fluffy bathrobe, too good to sleep between motel sheets.

Typical Cordelia, Buffy thought.  But for the first time, she felt a little less justified in thinking it.  A little less like she knew everything there was to know about the other girl and exactly what type of girl she was.

Most of the time, Buffy thought of Cordelia as being a younger, snottier, more-junior-high-than-junior-high-had-ever-really-been version of herself. Not a bad person... exactly, but not one to depend on either. Yet, here she was, proving her wrong, being a stand-up, do-the-right-thing and get-it-done kind of person. Even if she wasn't always entirely gracious about it.

Truth be told, she wasn't complaining about it that much either, especially considering all the trouble she'd probably be in before this was all over. Buffy was surprised, relieved and deeply grateful. As she drifted off to sleep, at last, she though how lucky she really was, against all odds, to have found a friend in Cordelia Chase.

*****

“What on Earth?” Spike murmured. “Why is there water seeping in here?”

Edwards sat up straighter for a moment, ears pricked. “A storm,” he said after a moment, sounding equal parts relieved and annoyed. “I can hear the runoff gurgling in through that storm drain we opened up. It must be pouring just a little faster than it can drain off into the lower caverns.”

“The Flood! The Flood!” Drusilla wailed, startling them both with the intensity of her distress, “Oh! No! What are we going to do? She's ruining everything!”

“Now, Now, Ducks,” Spike began gently, trying to put his arm around her, “It's just a little—” Drusilla shrugged out of Spike's would be embrace and whirled to face him, slashing him across the face, leaving five claw marks from temple to cheek, bloodying the eyelid he had to close to keep from being blinded. Spike growled low in his throat, then smiled at himself, shaking his head, struggling to shame his temper into control with the knowledge of its absurdity. You might as well curse the wind as a mad woman.

“Drusilla, Pet,” Spike tried again, his voice tight and controlled, his hands kept to himself this time. Drusilla 'collapsed' dramatically against a wall, moaning more piteously than ever. And now she wasn't the only one. Aunt Jemima was getting in on the act, soliloquizing in that Black African gibberish, somewhere between panic and opera. Spike had to take another deep breath and remind himself that: (A) They were both equally crazy; (B) It didn't bloody matter; (C) They weren't _trying_ to drive him to distraction and the fault would be his alone if he let them; and (D) Edwards (his last trusted lieutenant and indispensable sane companion) wouldn't appreciate having his bint's teeth knocked down her throat any more than Spike would have, and then they'd have really been in a fine mess. Spike threw up his hands with a little, frustrated grunt of dismissal and resolved to ignore both women until they calmed down.

“Oh Dear, oh dear,” Edwards said, suddenly sounding rather worried himself. Before Spike had time to be exasperated with him, he saw—and at the same time felt—why. The water was rising. It was creeping up to cover the toes of his boots.

“The _pool_ ,” The Brother hissed with sudden urgency. “It's going to overflow!”

And it was, Spike suddenly realized. Nothing they could do about it. They didn't have the time or the tools to sandbag. They didn't have sand or bags. And the water was rising so quickly now (almost to their ankles already!) that it wouldn't have mattered if they had. This was more than a matter of one storm drain backing up into their lair. This was a whole sewer system being overwhelmed, failing to drain. This was a— “Flash Flood!” Spike shouted. “Everybody Out! Grab those picks,” he instructed Edwards and The Brother, “We'll dig out through the main basement. Dryer and darker that way.”

“But is there time?” Edwards worried aloud.

Spike thought about the speed of the rising water and did a little quick figuring, thinking it best not to count on the rain to stop any minute, though of course, this being Southern California, it should. “There's time,” he concluded, already calmed significantly by the act of calculating, of making concrete plans, “If we hurry.”

*****

Andrew waited near the arrivals gate in the lone terminal of the tiny regional airport, seated resentfully in one of those ridiculously 'space-aged' plastic chairs. He was lucky to have that. Kendra's flight had been delayed by an unexpectedly strong headwind to the point that a whole new gaggle of wet, bedraggled, squawking Americans had arrived to meet the flight after that, which was sure to be delayed as well. In fact, it was beginning to seem doubtful that any more flights would be able to land in Sunnydale today.

Suddenly, a great peel of thunder shook the building and all the lights went out. There were shockingly few windows in the terminal, especially given its geographic location, and the room was now quite dark, though not pitch black. You'd have thought an airport would have had a generator, but as the seconds added up to a minute or more without any relief from the darkness, Andrew realized that this one did not. Or if it did, perhaps it only supplied power to the control tower and other such essentials. Evidently, such essentials did not include the loudspeakers, because an official in an orange Mac, carrying a large torch, hurried up to the boarding desk and announced that the building was being closed and that both of the flights that had been expected were now being rerouted to the much larger San Diego International Airport, some 23 miles to the north. Normally, that would have posed no problem for Mr. Giles. He'd just come from there this morning, after all, and he had retained his rented car for transportation in and around Sunnydale. But as he stepped from the terminal into the howling gale, pressed forwards, slightly back, and then forwards again by the crush of others seeking to rendezvous with rerouted travelers, it was abundantly clear that this weather was nothing a prudent man would drive across town in if he could help it at all.

Not being allowed to turn back, Andrew slogged through fairly swiftly running, ankle deep water to the short term parking lot. There he sat in his rental car for a good twenty-five minutes waiting for the crowd to thin out and the storm to calm at least a little. Even in a stationary position, the rain was battering the windshield so thick and fast that the world outside was much too vague for Monet to have painted it. Wind gusts buffeted the stationary vehicle just enough to be disturbingly noticeable. Andrew was tempted to take the opportunity to close his eyes for a moment, but a moment quite likely would have turned into an hour at least, and besides the fact that a carpark was no place for a respectable person to take a nap, he knew that the only way to adjust to the local time was to tough it out until he could go to bed at a reasonable hour. Besides, only a fool would let his guard down like that out of doors in such a wretchedly vampire infested town, especially under such a dark sky.

With nothing better to do, Andrew fell to contemplating the many difficulties he had to deal with. He realized right away that it would be futile, given the laps of time, to go to San Diego to collect Kendra. The Slayer had no reason to expect him. She had not even known that he was in California when she'd embarked. She hadn't even informed his son to expect her, in fact. No, she was certain to strike out for Sunnydale on her own, by whatever means, as soon as she landed. Andrew's best course of action would be to go to Rupert's, start digging into his books, and try to determine what sort of ritual the vampires were planning. That way, he would at least be ready to assist Kendra when she finally arrived.

As for how to deal with Rupert's Slayer... the most obvious task was to find her, but even before that, something had to be done to persuade her family that she did not belong in an asylum, without convincing them that either she or Rupert belonged in prison. And of course there was the related problem of Rupert's other employment. He needed to retain it if at all possible, both for a livelihood and for an excuse to remain in California during his leave, to say nothing of the all-hours access it gave the Slayer to the Hellmouth. But of course, it did increase his exposure to a possible investigation into his misconduct. And then there was the most ticklish difficulty of all, the difficulty of dealing with the child that Andrew more than half expected to be born of this affair. He had enough experience of both Slayers and young mothers (personally and professionally) as well as enough sense of what Buffy herself was like (from Rupert's reports) to doubt that she would ever seriously consider termination, particularly given the feelings she had already expressed on the subject. In short, the entire situation in Sunnydale was quite a mess, even apart from the weather, which might well be a sign of an impending apocalypse.

By the time the storm and the traffic cleared just enough to make the thought of driving reasonable, Andrew had decided against going straight to Rupert's and settling into a night of research. For one thing, he knew that his research would be more focused if it could be informed from the beginning with a little information from Kendra about her recent dreams and what she knew of Zabuto's signs and portents. For another, the situation with the Summers family didn't need to be left to ferment too long. He'd made a radical decision about what needed to be done to deal with them and he thought it best to act swiftly before they could cause any more problems.

*****

Hitchhiking wasn't exactly the word for what Kendra did to get from San Diego to Sunnydale. Hitchhikers _asked_ for rides and sometimes were forced to make unpleasant compromises to get them. What Kendra did was more like commandeering. She waited near the car rental counters while her fellow passengers claimed their baggage and then stepped directly into the path of a young (well, youngish) man who been on her own flight and was now jangling the keys to his new rental car nervously while he peered worriedly at the directions to where it could be found, as if not trusting that anything could be that simple. “I am coming wit you to Sunnydale,” Kendra informed him matter-of-factly.

The man almost literally did a double take. He blinked and stammered, but he complied. Kendra had known that he would. She had not targeted him randomly, but had read him as a man who was used to complying. Every day of being the Slayer, of having to judge intentions from actions, was making her better at that. She didn't thank him verbally, not wanting to imply that he had a choice, but she did unburden him of the largest of his two suitcases. She'd packed pretty heavily for this trip, by her own standards, which was to say that she had a good sized is-it-a-back-pack-or-a-purse on her back, which contained a change of clothes, a few personal items, a little cash and a couple of pieces of 'doll furniture' that could be easily deconstructed into several stakes and two crosses.

“I'm... I'm... that is... my name is Allan, Allan Finch,” the man stammered after they were already underway.

“Pleased to meet you,” Kendra said with cool courtesy, using the fact that he was driving as an excuse not to offer her hand. She had gotten herself into his car. He was headed for Sunnydale and not likely to stop and insist that she get out anywhere along the way. Any further friendly interaction was superfluous and liable to engender in him an inconvenient sense connection and entitlement to future contact. She wasn't here to make friends. She had come to help the only person she sort of knew who was almost like a friend, and of course, as always, to save the world. They drove on in what was, for Allan, clearly a very unnerving state of silence. He had little else to think about than the girl beside him, the slenderness of their acquaintance, and her unwillingness to expand it, which would have made even a confident person uneasy.

But soon, Mr. Finch had even more important things to worry about than the name and intentions of his passenger. It was clear they were headed into the heart of a powerful storm. Allan had to watch carefully through the driving rain so that he wouldn't miss the exit to Sunnydale or collide with the cars in front of him, which were slowing nearly to a stop to make the turnoff safely. As they approached the wildly dancing little green sign that read 'Now Entering Del Bacco County,' strong, erratic gusts of wind buffeted the car in all directions. Allan had to struggle to stay on the road, in his lane and moving forward. The rain was so thick he could hardly see the break lights of the car in front of him. When those disappeared, he wasn't sure if traffic had thinned out and he was alone on the road or if his visibility had been reduced to zero and he was about to crash. More than once, Allan was tempted to pull over, but he was only about five miles from home now, and there was nothing here, not even much of a shoulder. Instead, he continued to slow down until he was crawling along at ten miles an hour.

When the truck behind him made its presence known by blaring its very loud horn and turning on its huge, blinding lights, Allan sped up to twenty-five. That only seemed to encourage the trucker to lay on the horn and edge closer. Even at such a moderate speed, it was difficult to maintain control. The rent-a-car was an economy model and would not have handled well under the best of road conditions. As it was, keeping it upright and between the ditches proved impossible. Between the distraction behind him and the lack of visibility ahead, Allan missed the next bend in the road entirely. The car skidded and bumped. There was grass beneath the wheels and then nothing as the vehicle rolled over one quarter turn then slid along on its side (down none too gentle a slope) before coming to rest.

Shaking, not yet quite brave enough to open his eyes, Allan took stock of himself and realized he was alive, apparently even unhurt except for maybe a few stiff muscles in his neck and shoulders. The engine had stopped but Allan wasn't clearheaded enough to consider why. He was hanging sideways in his now very tight three point harness, impending close enough to his mysterious young passenger to feel her moving around. That surprised him. His eyes popped open. From the lack of screaming and cursing on her part, he must have developed a vague working notion that she'd been killed or knocked unconscious. Instead, she was calmly unbuckling herself and climbing into the back seat where she kicked her way through the automatically locked, once-left-but-now-top passenger door. Not the window. The door.

Allan gave a tiny yelp of alarm and started clawing at his seatbelt buckle. But once he had gotten himself loose (falling with an undignified thump into the passenger seat) he didn't know what to do next. He cowered under the front dash, trying to think if he had anything at all in his luggage that could ward off a vampire, or any chance of reaching it if he did. But she couldn't be a vampire, he suddenly realized, despite her amazing strength, her captivating voice and her near hypnotic eyes. The weather had been fair back in San Diego, hardly a cloud in the sky. He had seen her stand, unflinching beneath the naked sun.

“Are ya comin' or not?” she demanded in her not-quite-Jamaican accent, an island lilt mixed with something strangely like a Scottish brogue. Hands on her hips, she leaned down into the open doorway, glaring impatiently. And suddenly it was absolutely clear. Not a vampire! A Slayer!

“C-coming,” Allan managed to utter. He even managed to clamber into the back of the car and out into the pouring rain. The girl was soaked to the skin and he soon would be, but Allan was shaking for an entirely different reason. His throat was tight, his heart pounding. “Who are you?” he demanded shakily, more playing for time than wanting to know something as unimportant as her name. A Slayer. _Another_ Slayer! The rumors were true! All of them! It was... a miracle. It was a terrifying miracle, one he was on the wrong side of.

“I am called Kendra, sir,” the girl was saying, then, as an after thought, maybe because he looked so very uncomfortable, she added, clearly making something up out of thin air, “Kendra... er... Young.” She was probably worried that her lack of a last name was part of what was making him nervous. It wasn't. A Slayer! Allan mopped his brow pointlessly, out of habit, without making his brow any dryer or his hand any wetter. An unaccounted for Slayer, lost and alone, whether she saw it that way or not. A Slayer whose disappearance (if she were to disappear) could not possibly be blamed on the Mayor. Which meant that she was in very serious danger. What was he going to do? If the Mayor ever found out (and somehow the Mayor always found out) that his most trusted aide had deliberately let an opportunity like this slip from his hands... Well then, Allan would be the one in serious danger.

“C-come with m-me,” Allan stammered, hanging his head, successfully making it look like he was shielding his face from the rain, rather than from her gaze, “I kn-know the fastest way b-back t-t-to-t-t-town from here.”

*****

When Willow awoke in the late afternoon, the storm was just winding down. Sunnydale had never seen such a downpour. The tiny city's outsized sewers overflowed. Human waste and other refuse ran in the gutters and even in the streets. Noisome vapors tinged the air. Ugly half-glimpsed things sloshed through alleys, skittered around corners and wriggled into the crevices of forgotten buildings, out of sight, seeking the high ground but not the light. The parting clouds caught more than a few vampires off guard, though the damp surroundings prevented their sudden flaring out of existence from doing too much collateral damage.

It took Willow a moment to realize that that was what she was watching out of the hospital window, scattered vampires flaring in the parking lot, being studiously ignored. She felt vague, dislocated, detached. She thought for the first time what a strange place Sunnydale really was, how it might seem to an outsider. Now that it finally occurred to her to look, she realized she was alone. Which made sense she guessed. She didn't know why she might have thought Amy would be there, or even be allowed there. She wasn't family.

Family. The idea stabbed Willow in the heart, or maybe in the guts. That was something she really didn't have anymore. She wondered what would happen to her. Her uncle would come for her maybe, and take her to live in Elmwood. Or maybe not. Maybe she would have to go into foster care. Elmwood wasn't in Del Bacco County, and she was still on bond, after all....

Willow sat up, or tried to. One of her wrists was literally _chained_ to the side rail of her hospital bed, as in there was a handcuff around her wrist, about eighteen inches of metal links and then another handcuff. The chain was too short for her to reach the phone, but long enough to reach the nurse's call button. She did, and when they came, demanded explanations forcefully enough that someone finally sent a police officer to 'deal with' her... by telling her that she would be going back to Juvie until at least her April 23rd court date... because she had violated her conditions of release and committed an entirely new crime, by possessing a stolen handgun.

*****

Andrew sat in his rental car across from the tidy, quaint, columned-porched little house on Revello Drive. Phone calls had availed nothing. Ringing the bell had been fruitless. Peering into the garage windows had shown the space within to be empty. So he waited. Regardless of the fact that the search for their 'missing child' was evidently headquartered somewhere else (most likely the local police station, whose door Andrew Giles would never darken if he could help it) they had to come by here eventually, if for no other reason than to see if their prodigal had returned on her own. He had Roberta taking sick leave from the hospital to watch for signs of life at the mother's gallery and other agents in Los Angeles watching the father's home and office without knowing why. He just had to keep beating the bushes until he eventually flushed them out. And when he did, he was going to make sure the situation between them and the Slayer got sorted and stayed that way.

*****

It was dark when Cordelia woke up. Buffy was still out cold, balled up in a mass of tangled covers, muttering distressed and unintelligible things. Could she really sleep all night _and_ all day? And what exactly was she dreaming? Buffy and bad dreams, Cordelia knew, equaled not a good thing. Buffy had had bad dreams for weeks last year, right before the Master and his minions had slaughtered Kevin and a dozen others, opened the Hellmouth, and nearly ended the world. Of course, running away from home with someone who was in ever increasing danger of popping out babies at any moment was also not a good thing, but this would be an especially bad time for yet another apocalypse.

Thanks a lot Giles! God! Why was it a rule that men (no matter how old and wise and intelligent) all had to be brainless horndogs? And what kind of moronic “Mystic Council” would set it up so that a lonely miserable teenage girl had to rely exclusively on a lonely miserable middle-aged man for support in not dying anyway? Wasn't that pretty much asking for exactly this kind of trouble? And besides any of that, there was such a thing as a condom!

Oh well, Cordelia guessed she had better let Buffy sleep. Being pregnant in fast forward would have to take a lot out of a person, even a Slayer. Cordelia's mom had barely gotten out of bed in the six months it had taken her to almost have twins ten years ago. Of course, she had also barely gotten out of bed since, but that was probably a different issue. Cordelia sighed. Truthfully, she didn't know why anyone would ever get pregnant if they could help it. All of the possible outcomes ranged from terrifying to just plain depressing. Honestly, she was not ever going to have actual complete and for real sex until it was one hundred percent necessary to reel in the billionaire of her dreams or until she had settled and was actually married to a mere millionaire, by which point she hoped to already be fixed or at least...

Cordelia's thoughts came to a screeching halt. This was the first time since getting together with Xander that she had pictured her future without thinking even for a moment that he might have a key role (i.e. male romantic lead) in it. It had been two day since there last conversation (or okay, not so much conversation as fight) at the Bronze. Two days in which neither had called the other to apologize. Two days in which Xander had been seriously injured, hospitalized even, and Cordelia hadn't even thought until just this very moment about the fact that she hadn't even considered going to see him. Wasn't that more or less the definition of 'over'? She had treated Mitch better than that even after she was pretty sure she'd be leaving him for Kevin as soon as he was on his feet again. She hadn't necessarily meant what she'd said to Xander Tuesday night as a breakup, but at this point, she guessed it had been. Particularly since everything she had said was true, and apparently he had no answer for it.

Cordelia took a deep breath. She felt... fine? Yes, fine. Finer than she had ever felt after a breakup that was not really a trade-up. So she was no longer Xander's girlfriend, and still no longer the queen bee of Sunnydale High. Was it a loss of face, a loss of status? Sure. But only at Sunnydale High, which would be in her rear view mirror in fifteen months anyway. It wasn't like being either of those things was going to help her get into Columbia or Harvard, or save the world from the forces of darkness. And what she had said to Harmony was still true, Xander or no Xander. Cordelia Chase didn't need or want any part of a small minded clique of adolescent sheeple, no matter who got to wear the little bell. She had outgrown those girls, she realized. She was better than them. Smarter. Stronger. More capable. Maybe it was time she stopped hiding it. Maybe to was time to spread her wings, and see how high she could really fly.

 


	7. Olives and Arrows

“The rain has stopped,” Kendra noted calmly, significantly, as much as to say, 'let's get going.'

“But it's dark out,” Allan pleaded, not bothering to play the game of pretending neither of them knew the unique significance of nightfall in Del Bacco County. Instead, he used their shared knowledge to his advantage, letting her think that the evils of the night were the sole cause of his unconcealable nervousness.

“I've stayed in this cabin before,” he added, a little defensively, in response to her dubious look. It belongs to one of the City Councilmen. We'll be safe here until morning.

“The night does not scare me,” Kendra informed him coolly, almost defiantly. “And I am not spending it in this little room wit you. Now are you going to show me the way to Sunnydale or do I have to find me on way?"

*****

“What are we still doing here?” Spike groused. “The sun's been down for hours. We should be vacating. We should be finding someplace less... Slayer adjacent to establish ourselves.”

“The water will go back down,” Edwards said calmly, firmly, preempting the more violent objections Drusilla seemed prepared to make.

“Spike's right,” The Brother countered soberly. “The ritual is ruined. Never mind the mess this flood is going to leave; it'll take us years to find another priest with the faith and skill to produce that much true holy water in a place like this. And it's got to be done on sight to cleanse the basin in the process. It'll be defiled again after this.

"What are we going to do,” he argued, nodding slightly in the general direction of Angel and Zanya, who were resting together on a pile of old cardboard boxes, “drag a gimp and a corpse around all that time?”

That was it. Drusilla fell upon The Brother, screeching in rage. In cold blood, she could have matched him easily. Solid as he was, she was by far the more experienced fighter. But in this mad passion, she flung herself against him without thought or plan, flailing at him like a blind thing.

Within seconds The Brother had gained the upper hand. He punched Drusilla hard in the face, ignoring Spike's shouted order to back off, knocking her (senseless) to the floor. When he raised his fist to strike again, Spike did more than shout. He brained the big lummox with the flat side of a pick ax, leaving him conked out on the floor beside Drusilla.

Edwards leapt into action, staking the former priest where he lay. Spike eyes flashed, but he mastered his temper. “Thanks ever so, mate,” snarled sardonically.

“Only too happy to help,” Edwards replied dryly. It was over, and they both knew it, the round that Spike had just lost. Spike was bound to Drusilla. Drusilla was bound to Angel. Edwards was bound to Zanya and therefore must remain united with Drusilla in seeing that the ritual eventually got done.

“He was right about one thing,” Spike said of his vanquished would be ally. “It'll take longer to find another one of him than it did the first one. We can't stay here all that time. We need to find a new place.

"Who knows,” he added, “this town being so full of mystical nooks and crannies, maybe we'll find someplace almost as powerful and not quite so spiritually filthy to set up for the second round. Then we might be able to use the premade stuff and be in business in a month or two instead of a year or two.”

“It does seem like we're bound to miss next week's full moon regardless,” Edwards admitted.

“Stay with them,” Spike said in a firm, leaderly way, reaching a resolution. “I'll go and scout out a place for us to spend a few days while we look for somewhere more permanent to dig in.

*****

“They _were_ here,” Mr. Gordon, chief among the Mayor's cadre of vampires, assured his master. “Mr. Finch's signal definitely originated from the beacon in the coat closet. Besides, I can still smell him here. And someone else. A Slayer, just like the signal indicated, only—”

“But what would Allan be doing out here with the Slayer?” the Mayor wondered aloud, brow furrowed. “He knows we're not ready to move against her yet, not that he would ever be the one to—” The Mayor's brow creased further, his misgivings suddenly deepening. “I don't suppose she's taken him captive. Now there's a horrible thought. That would mean she's already figured out—”

“No, sir,” Mr. Gordon finally summoned the courage to interrupt, not wanting to be blamed later for letting the Mayor persist in error. “Not The Slayer, at least not _that_ Slayer; a Slayer, _another_ Slayer. Here in Sunnydale.

"That lowlife Willy must have been on the level after all with that story he was selling a few months back. And now she's back, maybe out to bust another one of Spike's schemes. Mr. Finch must have somehow lured her out here so that he could activate the beacon and give us the chance to capture her, like we what-ifed about last Fall.”

“Then where are they?” the Mayor demanded coolly.

“I... don't know,” Gordon admitted, avoiding his bosses impatient eyes. “Something must have gone... not according to plan. You know how it is with Slayers.”

*****

“Ahhhnnn!!!” Buffy rolled over and groaned, much louder than before. She opened her eyes, then groaned some more. “This isn't a dream, is it?” she grumbled miserably.

“No,” Cordelia said softly, coming to sit on the edge of her bed, leaving her icepack on her own nightstand, not wanting to worry Buffy by calling attention to her injured hand. “But you were dreaming something,” she added, “weren't you?”

Buffy nodded. There was no denying it. Her hands were twisted in the sheets and she was drenched in sweat. “I dreamed—” Buffy dropped her eyes. It sounded ridiculous out-loud, embarrassing. “I dreamed I married Giles, except... it was weird and scary and...”

Buffy turned her face away altogether, looking at (if not quite through) the curtained window to the parking lot. She couldn't bring herself to say the last word: _Wrong_.

Cordelia visibly relaxed; she couldn't help it. At least it wasn't the end of the world. But that wasn't something she could say to Buffy right now. “You'll be okay,” she said instead trying to sound a lot more certain than she felt. “Whatever happens, you'll be okay. Whatever you... end up doing.”

“Yeah,” Buffy tried her shaky best to agree. “You're right. We just... Let's just... What time is it?”

Cordelia glanced at the clock about the same time Buffy groaned from having already seen it, but she answered out loud anyway, “It's 8:16. What?” she added, feeling concerned but sounding annoyed. Cordelia felt like groaning herself, but for a completely different reason. She pulled a bottle out of her purse and dry swallowed two little white pills, trying not to be too obvious about it.

“We have maybe half an hour to get to this place in Scottsdale,” Buffy explained miserably as she lumbered to her feet and started getting dressed, putting on the same pair of sweat pants from the night before with a huge sweater that probably belonged to Cordelia's mom and didn't match at all. “Plus I'm starving,” she grumbled, the beginnings of a very un-hero-like pout in her voice.

Cordelia's eyes widen for a second as she saw just how much Buffy had expanded around the middle since the last time she'd had a good look, and just how thin and pale her face had become in contrast. Quickly, Cordelia turned away, gathering her purse and keys as she composed her expression.

“What's in Scottsdale?” she asked, her voice cloaked in cheerful, casual interest. Buffy explained about the cafe and her plan to contact Willow. “Email,” Cordelia seemed to agree. “Probably the last place any grownup will check to see if we're in contact with Willow.... Unless they've, you know, _met_ her.”

The sudden knife twist of Cordelia's tone, the way it lay in ambush to become harsh and sarcastic, reminded Buffy a little too sharply of why they had been not-friends for so long. “I did think of that,” she found herself countering defensively, though of course, she had not. “It's not like I was planning to say, 'Hi, this is Buffy and Cordelia, we're in Arizona.'” Though, in fact, she realized, to the extent that she had 'planned' anything, it was exactly that.

“Well, what then?” Cordelia asked, arms folded, no longer actively getting ready to roll.

“Let's just... figure it out in the car,” Buffy suggested.

Cordelia favored Buffy with a decidedly skeptical look, but uncrossed her arms and headed for the door, grabbing a bag of disgustingly packaged-not-to-be-fresh powdered mini-donuts and tossing them to Buffy. Buffy wrinkled her nose, but started eating them before they even made the parking lot. On the plus side, she seemed to be past the icky throwing up stage of pregnancy.

While they drove, Buffy tried to think of exactly what to say to tip Willow, but no one else to the fact that they were basically fine and not all that far away. But it was Cordelia who thought of the first thing that might actually work.

“I don't know...” Buffy repeated for about the fiftieth time as the cafe manager turned the open sign off and glared at them expectantly. “I mean, it's a little—”

“Perfect,” Cordelia interrupted her, hitting send without further debate. “Now let's get out of here.”

*****

“Perfect!” Spike declared quietly, grinning in the dark stairwell, impressed by his own brilliance. The knob turned easily in his hand of course. He wasn't worried about breaking the lock. The real test was not opening the door, but walking through it, which he did just as easily.

Angel had been right. They had held the place for him, and why shouldn't they? Angel had paid a year's rent in January, utilities included, the same as he'd done the year before. It was the only way the humans would condescend to rent to a 'creature of the night' when he was too soul-having to drive a harder bargain.

Spike had a look around, inspecting for flaws. The space was small for five people, but adequate. Bigger than plenty of crypts he'd shared with a nest that size. The power and water worked fine. There was a good stereo. No TV, but that was easily remedied. The upstairs neighbors had a satellite dish that ought to be pretty easy to highjack.

But the best feature of all was the sun-tight metal blinds. Technically, it was a 'basement' rental, accessible only by a three-quarter flight of stairs down from the street. But it was still more above ground than below, not the usual place to come looking for vampires. Not that Buffy ever would.

Despite her physical courage, any fool could see how easily the girl crumpled in the face of emotional confrontation. She wouldn't chase those painful memories down into this little hole for anything, whatever she had to do to convince herself that it was unnecessary. Which made this just about the safest hiding place for a nest of vampires in all of California.

Satisfied with what he'd found, confident it would do for more than a few days, Spike set out to gather his companions. He took the back way, avoiding the brightly lit downtown area south of Main Street, which was boarded by densely packed subdivisions and the sprawl to the mall.

Instead, he traveled north of Main, behind the backs of the semi-ancient buildings (City Hall, the court house, the old jail, the hospital, Cranston's Feed Store A.K.A. “The Bronze”) that had once formed the beating heart of a tiny frontier town. He traveled through never dense and now half abandoned neighborhoods of rickety wood frame houses, honeycombed with small churches and large cemeteries, bounded on the north by woods that had once been farm land, and woods that had always been woods.

He passed the road that led to the old furniture factory that he had until recently called home and further past that to the old saw mill, the once bustling but now secluded spot near the vineyard that had brought the first hapless, ignorant white settlers to this area in the first place. There was nothing for him down that road anymore, thanks to Angel, and he tried not to think as he passed about how very much Angel had mucked up everything in his life and still was.  Or how little he was able to do about it.

Sucking it up, focusing on Now, Spike headed for the school. Sunnydale High had been built on the edge of town, some seventy or eighty years ago, but now it was like the old downtown, lit and populated on three sides with the dark woods at its back. It was a warm, pleasant night and despite the thick mud that squelched under his feet with every step, Spike found that he was making good time and really in a pretty good mood.

Although Drusilla's hopes for Angel were still throwing monkey wrenches into his life left and right (mostly by keeping him in this miserable Buffyridden town in the first place) Angel himself remained dormant, powerless, pathetic. And in everything except the matter of Angel, Drusilla was ruled by Spike, accepting his judgment, acceding to his plans. Essentially, Spike was the master of the house again. Essentially.

And thanks to this latest miraculous 'setback', things might continue in the same vein for years, even indefinitely, a delay for which Spike could not possibly be blamed. Indeed the process of searching for a new priest could involve extensive travel away from Sunnydale, for weeks, maybe months at a time.

And considering the hazards of travel... surely an opportunity would eventually present itself for Angel to be 'accidentally' dropped in an Ocean or exposed to a few seconds of sunlight. He was sure he could find a way to make it seem inevitable. In the meantime, as long as he was being forced to hang around Sunnyhell, he'd just have to give the Slayer a wide birth, and be quiet enough to let her do the same.

That was the plan anyway. Until the plan suddenly changed. Because there on a lonely back road, almost but not quite out of the woods (practically dragging a tall, pale, sniveling, sport-coated human into town) was the Slayer. The Other Slayer.

*****

“Oh come on, Cordelia” Buffy urged, “You said yourself the swelling is getting worse. There's an emergency room across the street. Besides if you don't go and it turns out to be broken, I'll have to feel horribly guilty.”

“They'll want ID,” Cordelia objected.

“So?” Buffy said. We're on the run from the Del Bacco County Juvenile Court, not the FBI. I somehow don't think they got an APB out to Scottsdale, Arizona in just over twenty-four hours. “Besides, you can just use that fake student ID, the one that says you're a twenty-two-year-old senior at UC Sunnydale.”

“Crestwood College,” Cordelia corrected her crossly. “No one in my family has _ever_ been to a _state_ university. Speaking of which, they'll also want money.” Cordelia wasn't entirely sure why she was so resistant to getting medical attention. She just had a gut feeling that it would somehow go wrong, and okay, maybe she was having a little bit of an 'I'm a Chase and I don't need your help' kind of pride attack. But either way, it didn't matter. Buffy wasn't having it.

“It's an emergency room,” she pointed out. “It's not like they can say no. Just tell them to bill you and give them a fake address.”

“Alright, fine,” Cordelia conceded at last, mainly because her hand really was hurting worse than before. “But while we're waiting forever like you always have to in emergency rooms everywhere, you have to go up to the cafeteria and eat something. You look like you're going to pass out.”

“Alright,” Buffy agreed. “I am feeling a little lightheaded.” She could hardly deny it. They'd barely gotten to the E-Z Bean in time to type an email, let alone order anything first. Buffy had had nothing to eat in almost an hour and not a whole lot in the past twelve hours, relatively speaking, plus she had already admitted to feeling dizzy before they'd even gotten out of the car.

The red and white EMERGENCY sign was directly across the street from the entrance to the strip mall. There hardly seemed any point in moving the car to the patient parking, which was actually further away. Neither girl even thought about looking for a crosswalk.

As they walked they talked. Buffy worried aloud about being seen by doctors and other potentially cool people in such a terrible outfit, trying to keep Cordelia's mind off of her clearly increasing pain. Cordelia tried to reassure her that she actually looked fine, and then (since they both knew that was a big lie) that it didn't matter how she looked under these extreme circumstances.

Of course, neither of them really believed that either, but it was nice of her to say and Buffy told her so. Major, major guilt, she thought, if while Cordelia was being such a good friend she really had broken her hand because—WHAM! THUMP!

*****

“I am certain that we are going the right way now,” the Slayer insisted flatly, losing all patience with the Deputy Mayor's meandering and dithering. “Can you not see all those lights ahead?”

“Well I... I suppose it's possible—if we could just...” He reached out a hand as if to tug her by the sleeve, then seemed to think better of it. Kendra looked at him askance. If she didn't know any better, she would have sworn that he didn't _want_ to get back to town, that he was actually putting it off.

Suddenly, Kendra felt a familiar strangeness in the air. She held up a hand, signaling Allan to be still and quiet, which he did at least, without asking her any questions. It was a good thing too, because she needed to concentrate. There was a vampire very nearby, but being very quiet, which meant that it was probably a smart, careful vampire. One that knew she was there.

Kendra pulled a cross and a stake from her little bag and turned carefully in a slow circle, examining every available bit of cover. She thought she saw shadowy movement in the trees to her immediate southeast, but it might have only been a breeze blowing the leaves a little.

She was completing her circle, keeping one eye peeled for movement from that direction when a sudden instinct made her turn sharply to the west, just in time to put her forearm up and block a flying kick to her head. With a little scream of terror, Allan turned and fled back into the woods; Thank God and Good Riddance!

There was no time to worry about the likes of Mr. Finch now. It wasn't just any vampire that had leapt out of the shadows and attacked her, Kendra realized, with a slight shock as she got her cross up in a decent shielding position at last and tried to find an opening amidst his constantly re-tacking but not retreating assault to thrust her stake and gain the initiative. It was Spike!

Besides the fact that he was an incredible (and aggressive) fighter, he was also, she realized, unlikely to be alone, at least for long. The last she had heard from Buffy (in a letter sent Watcher to Watcher a few weeks back) Spike, or at least Drusilla, had joined forces with Angelus, who was leading a large contingent of Hellmouth regulars, many of whom had remained in a loosely cohesive group since the days of The Master.

But it had also seemed clear from the letter that Spike himself was injured, essentially out of action. In fact, when Mr. Zabuto had warned her of exactly what ritual the Seeing Women thought the vampires might be planning, when he had prepared her for what she would have to do to be able to effectively resist their plan and not become their unwitting agent, she had assumed that it was Spike they were trying to restore to full health and vigor this time. Clearly, that was not the case.

Kendra was holding her own, but only just. Then, for a moment, it seemed like Spike might be backing off. Kendra made the most of the opportunity without analyzing it, able to make an offensive move with her stake at last.

Spike blocked it with the sword that she now realized he had backed up just long enough to draw. At the same time, he jumped up onto a stump so that her simultaneous kick (meant to knock him off his feet and down into the point of her stake) landed on wood rather than flesh, breaking a toe, which she ignored.

Somewhere amid her rapid tactical analysis of the desirability and difficulty of retreating, versus the greater desirability and at least equal difficulty of kicking Spike's behind, Kendra found the out-of-place thought that a couple of broken bones might actually be good for her, if they could help speed up her pregnancy to the relatively smooth middle part, past the constant misery of morning-noon-and-night sickness that she had been living through for most of the past week.

Then again, Kendra realized, if she didn't find a way out of her present difficulty, and soon, morning sickness would be just one of a very long list of things she would never have to worry about again. If she could just—ZING! THUMP!

The second vampire, who was suddenly behind Kendra, cursed loudly in an upperclass, almost-but-not-quite-Anglo-Caribbean accent as he fiddled with what her hasty peripheral glance identified as a gun. Spike looked up at her from where he had crumpled at her feet. His expression was disbelieving, put-upon. “What the blazes?” he gasped, then swooned where he lay, with what looked like an over fletched lawn dart sticking out of his chest.

*****

“What have we got?” the ER doctor demanded of the orderlies and the charge nurse as he approached the two gurneys, pulling his gloves on as he went.

“Two pedestrians, both female, late teens/early twenties,” the charge nurse informed him hurriedly, “hit-n-run by a large pickup truck. The blonde girl appears to be pregnant, no ID. Already called OB for a consult. Head trauma times two. Probable internal injuries. The brunette, 'Cordelia' has two IDs, same name different dates of birth; plus a fat wad of cash. It's a safe bet they're both juveniles, runaways, possibly into drugs.”

The doctor nodded his understanding. “Get a full blood count, type and tox labs on both,” he ordered. “Prep the OR in Trauma and the one in OB with Trauma in mind and get Taggart in here to back Hollins up. I want— Oh Jeez!”

Urgent suddenly got a lot urgenter. The blonde girl was going into convulsions.

*****

Kendra didn't hang around to see what this new vampire was up to, why he had shot Spike with a... whatever that was, or how many more were about to show up any second. Seizing the moment of confusion, she darted straight into the woods, doubling back towards town the minute she was in the trees, hopefully screened even from vampiric view.

Towards town, but not towards the high school campus. Kendra had gotten her bearings now. She knew where she was and, more importantly, where she was going. She headed straight for Revello Drive.

The scene, when she arrived was every bit as confusing as the one she had just fle—tactically retreated from. Every bit as confusing, but not nearly as threatening. One lone, opportunistic vampire was fighting a determined, well armed, but clearly outmatched old man near the wreckage of a little green 'economy' model car that looked to have been pealed open like a can of sardines. The man had a sword and knew how to use it, while the vampire was fighting (or mostly blocking) with whatever came to hand, mainly the broken pieces of the (probably rented) car.

Still, it was clear that he couldn't hold out much longer unless Kendra intervened. Taking only a second or two to size up her opponent, the Slayer raised her stake and rushed headlong into the fray, hoping (but not really expecting) to land her first thrust cleanly into the demon's back and straight through to its heart. To her mild surprise, she did exactly that.

“Oh, My!” the (clearly English) man gasped, struggling for his composure as he took in the face of his rescuer through the swirls of dust that still hung in the air between them. “I'm awfully glad you happened along, I must say. I'm sorry there was no one to meet you at the airport,” he added, offering her his hand. “Councilman Giles,” he introduced himself formally, “at your service. Specifically as Temporary Field Watcher, for the duration of your stay in Sunnydale.”

Kendra was surprised, but she supposed she shouldn't have been. She had known that Buffy's Watcher must be related to the Councilman in some way. She politely returned his greetings and gave her obligatory assent to his proposal that they set out for his son's Condominium at once to “get out of this cold night air.”

When she had shown him the proper respect, she inquired and he explained that the younger Mr. Giles was in hospital and that Buffy was “unaccounted for” owing to certain “difficulties with her family” but almost certainly unharmed. In fact, he had just come by to have talk with her parents about those difficulties, but had not found them at home.

“Then she is no longer in Sunnydale?” Kendra asked, relieved, but surprised.

“No,” the Councilman admitted, seeming puzzled. “You don't seem... enormously bothered by her absence,” he observed. “Didn't Mr. Zabuto's sources suggest that some well... rather large scale 'events' might be happening to require the attention of both Slayers?”

“Perhaps,” Kendra admitted, feeling irrationally uneasy discussing the subject that they were clearly approaching, telling herself that she ought to be less squeamish, more professional, detached. “But nonetheless I am relieved for Buffy, that she does not have to... become involved in stopping this particular ritual. And I will be able to focus most clearly on the mission knowing that the vampires cannot get the most important ingredient they need to complete their dark magic before I find a way to break the nest.”

Councilman Giles blinked as if absorbing another shock. “You _know_ what the vampires are planning?” he managed at last.

“Of course,” Kendra answered, a bit surprised herself. “Did Mr. Zabuto not discuss it wit you when you spoke to him about my arrival?”

“Not... in detail,” he admitted. “Why don't you enlighten me as to... those detailed of which you have been apprised.”

“The Healing of the Night Huntress,” Kendra explained solemnly, “Must take place at the full moon, as I'm sure you know....”

Councilman Giles coughed slightly. “Of course,” he agreed, embarrassedly enough for Kendra to surmise that he actually knew most of what she was about to say, but she dutifully continued anyway, supposing he might be testing her in some way, not one to challenge the authority of a Watcher in any case.

“Additionally, the ritual requires two distinct sacrifices, the dust of many vampires drowned in holy water and the blood of a... the phrase is sometimes translated as a 'maiden' or 'unmarried' Slayer.” Kendra couldn't help feeling a little proud of how unsentimentally she had stated the facts, despite their implications. She felt a little less proud, maybe a little resentful, when the Councilman's dry, knowing laugh met her ears.

But the joke was not at Kendra's expense. “I... don't think you need worry much about Buffy... providing the needed sacrifice,” he explained carefully.

“I'm... not sure you understand,” Kendra plowed forward, assuring herself that he could not consider her correction impertinent as long as it was truly necessary under the circumstances. “The English texts are taken from the Latin and that from the Aramaic, which was handled I'm afraid a bit too delicately.

"It was only just before I left that a... contact of Mr. Zabuto's was able to translate it directly from the original Tuwaric. The more accurate phrase would be the 'unmated' or 'unbred' Slayer, meaning any Slayer who has never been...” Kendra simply couldn't help hesitating a bit here, “with child.”

The Councilman stopped in midstride. His mouth did not literally fall open, but he was as quiet as if it had. He might have even been holding his breath. Kendra turned away, embarrassed that he was so shocked by her words. She couldn't help it.

When she turned back again, confusion overtook her embarrassment and more that a little resentment started creeping in. The Councilman was no longer still, no longer holding his breath. He was dabbing at his eyes and his shoulders were shaking with quiet but persistent laughter. 


	8. “Hey, Look Over There! What In the World Could That Be!”

“Allan, Allan,” the Mayor cooed/chided, “there's no need to swoon. Heck, it's not like I'm gonna bite your head off.” He actually giggled a little at the absurdity of that image. Allan laughed along with his boss a bit nervously. Okay, more than a bit. A lot nervously.

Some of the vampires laughed too, but probably for a different reason.  Which was part of what was making Allan so nervous. Part but not all.

“Now,” Wilkins went on, his voice smooth, soft, businesslike yet friendly, almost soothing, “Just calm down and tell me from the beginning...” His voice was suddenly freeze dried, becoming not only icy but razor sharp as words were forced from between his teeth. “Tell me how you lost my Slayer!”

*****

“Do you feel friendless and deserted? Are you worried about facing your demons alone? Do not despair! Lift up your eyes and look to the East! In the City of the Resurrection waits the most powerful friend you have ever known. The Risen Savior of the World awaits even now to return unto you in your time of need. Fear not, for the one in whom you have placed your trust and faith is well known to you and if the Chosen One sayeth unto you, “I will return and my charioteer with me,” do you not believe that this is so? Therefore rejoice. For behold! The conqueror of death returneth in good time! All Prayers to this address will be answered promptly in the order they are received. Allow one business day (Monday through Saturday) for full effect. Pass this letter on to three friends and then shalt the sacred writ be Delivered. Harken unto these words if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, for the Charioteer who sitteth at the left hand of the Chosen One remembers all. Amen.”

Officer Walker finished reading aloud and looked over at Detective Stein expectantly. “So?” the detective said finally, when the expectant look didn't stop. “It's a chain letter. Religious Spam.”

“But look at the header,” Walker objected earnestly. “From Your Not-So-Long Lost Friends. 'Not-So-Long' space lost, not Not-So-Long-Lost. And the return—”

“Walker,” the detective interrupted impatiently. “I know you want to help and I appreciate your enthusiasm, I do, but once you've been on the job—”

“[lostgirls@webmails.net](mailto:lostgirls@webmails.net),” Walker interrupted him right back. “I mean they practically come right out and say it. It looks like exactly what we're looking for.”

“Until you open it!” Stein pointed out exasperatedly.

“Exactly!” the rookie retorted, eyes shining triumphantly. “They wanted to make sure she couldn't miss it to open, but after that it's in some kind of code, just in case of exactly what we're doing right now. And—”

“So they had this... elaborate code all worked out, but they didn't use it in the header?” Stein asked skeptically, derisively. “They use that 'hey cops open me first' header instead? Come on.”

“Well they are kids,” Walker persisted. “Being smart and stupid at the same time is kinda what teenagers do best.” Reading through it quickly to himself again, certain he was right, Walker kept at it, even as Stein rose to leave. “Look it's not even a code. Just misdirection. Counting on the girl to be smart and us to be stupid. To the East? City of Resurrection? Man, that's Phoenix, gotta be and the, like, hours of operation for answering prayers—?”

“Walker,” Stein said impatiently. “This is junk mail. Quit wasting your time and get back to tracking down all the kids they talked to yesterday. Just finish downloading all this crap first in case we need to go through it later. I gotta go interview Rosenberg at JDC. The Uncle's meeting us. And if I find out you stayed here one minute longer than it took to copy these files, I will personally make sure you get docked for the time. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Walker assured him. But as soon as the detective left, he started typing. It was worth a shot, and he had to do something while the files were downloading anyway, right? Besides, if 'The Chosen One' didn't answer his prayer, Stein would never have to know. And if she did, well then, that would teach that pompous jerk to 'appreciate' his 'enthusiasm'.

*****

“Yeah, Chief,” Stein assured his boss when he was alone in his car and could call on a secure channel. “I got your location. The Slayer's in Phoenix. And Chase's daughter is definitely with her, so that should make it easy to get close. Someone probably would have seen them about 9p.m. Mountain Time, at the E-Z Bean Cybercafe.”

*****

“Oh dear,” Andrew said just a bit guiltily, straightening his back and trying very hard to quit smiling. The confused, slightly wounded look on the poor girl's face actually helped with that a little. “I do apologize,” he told her sincerely. “Let me explain.”

And then he 'explained', not sincerely at all, but so relieved that he probably sounded quite sincere indeed. “I've only just now realized what Rupert was trying to explain to me at the hospital earlier today. I... didn't listen to him. I thought he was just... making excuses for bad behavior. I didn't even let him get far enough to connect what he was saying to the vampire situation. I should have known better, of course. I mean, obviously he isn't twenty-one anymore, but....”

Kendra stopped and looked at him. Now it was her turn to be shocked. “You mean to tell me that Mr. Giles, that he _himself..._ ” Kendra shook her head disbelieving.

Andrew sighed. Of course she would be shocked by that. Watcher meant the same as parent as far as she was concerned. Still, there was a way to turn the topic around and shame her to silence.

“Whom else do you suppose they should have involved,” he asked, “without his reasonably informed consent?” Assaying worried disbelief himself, he pressed her just a bit, “I mean, surely you didn't just....”

Averting her eyes, Kendra turned and started walking down the street again. Andrew let the sentence die and followed, smiling at his own cleverness. He really could be a snake when he wanted to be, which was a useful skill in this business.

When they got to Rupert's there was a message on the machine. Surprisingly, it was for Andrew. “Go on and reconnoiter upstairs,” he told Kendra. “See how many bedrooms and bathrooms we have to work with, what the library looks like. I'll give Dr. Carsters a ring back and see what I can put together for dinner.” He felt confident that Kendra was well trained and well mannered enough to understand him to mean, 'give me some privacy for this conversation and don't come down until I call you for dinner.'

“I know, I really ought to get a mobile,” Andrew tried to apologize, a bit irritatedly when it became clear just how crossed up things had become in the time it had taken the other Watcher to find a means of communication. Carsters swore he didn't mind, though he must have. At his age, no one was going to expressly pass judgment upon Andrew for being technologically incompetent, but if he was going to be in the field, he chided himself, he shouldn't use his age as an excuse for being behind the times.

“I'll get one in the morning,” he offered instead, despite the other man's insistence that it wasn't necessary. He did not explain how very close he had come to confessing to the Summers family that their daughter was not insane after all during his period of entirely inexcusable lack of accessibility. “I thought you'd shut down your clinic in Los Angeles and moved back to London,” he explained instead.

“Well I have,” Carsters admitted, “but they don't know that. I gave them both an 800 number that reroutes to every phone I have instantly. After all, I was told to keep an eye out, I assumed...”

“No, Absolutely,” Andrew agreed. “Good work.”

“I've done a bit of checking since last night,” Carsters went on explaining, “and there is a space available in same building as my old clinic, though not on the same floor. London has wired some money to one of our agents in L.A. and everything is being made ready as quickly as possible. I myself will arrive tomorrow. If we could just make contact with Buffy and let her know that the best course of action is to surrender to her mother...”

“If, indeed,” Andrew replied grimly. “None of us knows how to get in touch with her.”

“Who is 'none of us',” Carsters asked, sounding a bit puzzled.

Andrew explained about the presence of Zabuto's Slayer and, since he had to start somewhere in disseminating his version of events, since Carsters would be in a position to become suspicious soon enough anyway, he went on. “What I am about to tell you is strictly confidential,” he explained, “but well, and evidently Sam and Rupert must have compared notes and decided to do this without informing London, only thing worse than one lose cannon is two I suppose, but it seems both Slayers have agreed to undergo some rather unique preparations to prevent this particular ritual from being carried out.”

When he had explained more fully, Carsters seemed suitably shocked, particularly with the news that Rupert had done his part of the job himself. “Really,” Andrew censured him, “I'm surprised at you Horace. Slayers and Watchers do what they must. You know that. I must say, I rather think Sam showed poor judgment in involving a third party, though I suppose it is understandable under the circumstances.”

*****

Garrett Chase was just touching down at LAX, energized with the success of his latest trip to Tokyo, when he got the word. Immediately, he forgot about his flight to Sunnydale and rerouted for Phoenix.

The next commercial flight wasn't leaving soon enough, so he hired a charter service. It was expensive. It didn't matter.

Some people thought that Garrett Chase was a creature of pure greed, that the only thing that mattered to him was money. But they were wrong. There was one thing he cared about even more.

*****

“What the—” Joyce was at a loss for words.

“Even in L.A., this would be weird,” Hank agreed.

“In Belgrade, this would be weird,” Wallace pointed out. Then looking around worriedly, he added, “I think we should get inside.” Because even though the dots didn't quite connect up, he couldn't shake the thought that in Berlin in '44, this wouldn't have been weird at all.

“I'll call them from here,” Hank replied casually, pulling the phone from his pocket and extending the antenna, totally misunderstanding the point of what his ex-grandfather-in-law had said, as he was wont to do.

“Well _I_ need to sit down,” Wallace informed his granddaughter flatly, “and I'd like for you to sit with me.” Leaving her ex-husband to deal with the bizarre wreckage and the so-far-today-not-all-that-helpful police, Joyce went inside to help her poor old grampa to a seat and get him a nice cup of tea.

An hour later, Hank finally came in and helped Joyce drink a pot of coffee while Wallace rested his eyes and pretended to doze in a dining chair with his head on his chest. When he realized he wasn't pretending and that the young people weren't going to say anything important anyway, he got up and went to bed in Buffy's room.

Two hours after that, just the wrong side of midnight, the cops finally admitted, in response to Hank's eighth call, that they were not coming to look at the wreckage until morning and that there wouldn't be any new news about Buffy before then either, because their detectives were going home and going to bed.

“I'll take the couch,” Hank offered.

Joyce gave him a look. “Yes,” she said, “you will.”

*****

When Cordelia was finally wheeled out of surgery sometime between darkest and dawn, they put her in the recovery room right next to her young, blonde, very pregnant friend. Both girls were to be moved up to the Intensive Care Unit as soon as two of the more stable patients could be moved into regular rooms to make space.

Garrett had been assured that his daughter would _almost_ certainly survive the next twenty-four hours and would probably even regain consciousness when her medically induced coma was ended in another couple of days. It was possible that, in time, she might even make a 'more or less' full recovery. The news about her companion had seemed slightly less optimistic, but honestly, Garrett had mostly tuned it out.

For the hospital staff though, understandably, the blonde was the more troublesome problem. Anybody that pregnant, that busted up, that underfed and generally unhealthy, and with no idea who she was or who to call about her... their two biggest problems had to be the risk that she would miscarry and the problems they'd have on their hands if she didn't.

“Your sure you don't recognize her at all?” someone asked. Not the first someone, not for the first time. Garrett shook his head.

“It's not Harmony,” he murmured, though he'd already been told that this meant nothing to them. Of course it wasn't Harmony. If Harmony had been nearly six and a half months pregnant, he'd have heard about it by now. But it was the first thing he had thought of and so it was still all he could think to say.

Grasping, he finally thought of one other thing. “Whoever it is,” he said, “She'll probably be a student at my daughter's school, Sunnydale High. “Here,” he added, fishing in his wallet for Bob Roberts' card. He had the number memorized anyway. “This is our Chief of Police. He'll know if anyone will.”

The doctor, or administrator or whatever he was looked grateful and went off to try to raise Bob. If that didn't work, Garrett guessed he could call him himself later, but right now he had more pressing matters on his mind.

As he looked down at his daughter's battered unconscious body, he knew he couldn't put it off any longer. He had to call his wife and give her the 'cautiously optimistic' news. Reluctantly, Garrett turned his cell phone back on. There were messages. Not from his wife of course. She probably hadn't poked her nose out from under the covers long enough to know Cordelia was gone. Still, the messages _could_ be important. Maybe he could put it off a tiny bit longer.

It turned out to be lot longer, because after the beep, this was what he heard. “Hey, Garrett. It's Ron. Listen I've got good news. Something our mutual friend has been looking forward to for a long time. There's an opportunity out in Phoenix, set up perfectly for you to help us with. A matter involving a certain little thorn in his side that we've discussed before. You might be a little bit upset when you first here some of the details, but just remember, that's what's going to give us our way in, and trust me, this is going to be a good thing for all of us. And our friend will definitely show you some appreciation for going above and beyond. Give me a call when you get this. Have a good flight.”

There were some people who knew that Garrett Chase cared about one thing more than money. Most of them thought it was power. They were wrong too. Which is why his next call was to a very prestigious, very powerful, very _specialized_ Los Angeles law firm.

“Holland Manners, please,” he said, coolly polite. “Of course I know what time it is,” he assured the night receptionist (whom he happened to know was a good-looking vampire, late in her early thirties) just as coolly, just as politely. “I also know he lives in the building. Transfer me up. It's important.” The vampire, who knew who he was too, did exactly that.

“Hey there, Hol,” Garrett said cheerfully as soon as the lawyer was on the line, “listen man, sorry to wake you so late.” At that they both had a good laugh. “But listen. Seriously,” Garrett went on when the laughter had subsided a little. “You know that new talent we auditioned out in Seoul a couple of months back? I was really impressed with her work. Yeah, the whole Helen Keller thing is really working for her.

"Listen, do you think she could do her routine at a private party for a local guy out my way. Yeah, small town politician, thinks he's big noise needs someone to you know... draw him out of himself a little bit at a time. No, no specific requests that I know of but he is kind of old school, so he could have some unusual dietary preferences.

"No, no, not a drinker, definitely more of a healthy, sun-loving type. Yeah, tell her to come prepared for anything. Usual terms and conditions. Standard complication bonuses if any of those kind of issues do happen to pop up. Plus an extra 15% if she can do the job in the next 24 hours. I want it to be a surprise party.

“Yeah. I got a name. Mayor Richard Wilkins III.”

*****

“Ohhh!” Spike groaned as Drusilla's face swam into view above him, looking worried and relieved at the same time.

“There you are, Dear Heart,” she greeted him, planting a little, motherly kiss on his forehead.

“I know where I am,” Spike groused, taking in the vague contours of the basement beyond her. “I want to know where Edwards is. So I can kill 'im!”

“Now, now,” Drusilla scolded him mildly, more amused than anything. “We need to play nice with our friends or they might take their toys and go home.”

“No he won't” Spike countered, half filled with contempt and petulance, half amused himself.

“No, I won't,” Edwards agreed seriously from somewhere above and behind Spike. Growling in frustration, Spike tried to get to his feet, but his limbs were still too weak. “But you do need me,” he pointed out calmly “and I need you and we all know it, so here we all are.”

“So What'd you shoot me for, Mate?” Spike snapped, though of course he knew before Edwards answered that he had obviously been aiming for the Slayer. Spike only half listened to his explanation of how he had felt her presence or heard her shouting or something while he was up in the library (shopping for books and weapons maybe?) and had grabbed what looked like a rifle and headed out the back door.

“Trank gun, eh,” was all Spike said in response. He was calm now.

“Yes,” Edwards confirmed, relieved that his mood was improving. “It's a pity we aren't doing the ritual next week. This thing's just what we need to take the Slayer alive and keep her fresh til then."

Bollix, Spike started to say. Only a fool would want to take a Slayer and hold her alive for not hours but days. Especially with the other one still on the loose. Too much could go wrong.

It didn't matter though. They were not on the verge of completing the ritual, certainly not now, hopefully not ever. It was a moot point.

The more salient point was that while they had all been playing around with dart guns the sun had started to come up. Meanwhile, the tunnels were still fairly flooded, not to mention all the nasty things living in them that were now sure to be stirred up. So, as Edwards had said, here they all were.

*****

Garrett looked around the recovery ward once more to make sure no one conscious, alert and undistracted was too nearby. Then he bent over the blonde girl's bed and pulled her matted hair back from her face to get a closer look. Her face was a bit bruised and scraped from being smacked against pavement, her eyes a bit sunken, cheeks a bit hollow as though she'd been losing weight and sleep even before this, but she certainly wasn't unrecognizable, not once you knew who you were looking for.

Sure enough, it was Buffy Summers, the nosy young Vampire Slayer that the Mayor and his crew had been complaining about lately, to those who were in the know enough to hear those kinds of complaints, putting out feelers for a quiet way to handle the problem. That was certainly what Ron's call had lead him to suspect.

Still, Garrett was puzzled. Not by the fact that Wilkins was desperate to get his hands on the girl. Not even really so much by the fact that she was enormous with child, though he'd have though his daughter and her friends would have been prattling about such a juicy piece of gossip for months. No, what puzzled Garrett Chase was what Cordelia had been doing in the girl's company—and judging by the matching keys found in their effects, sharing a motel room no less—in Phoenix or anywhere else.

Granted they seemed to have warmed up to each other a little since the days when every other sentence out of Cordelia's mouth had been, 'guess what that psycho did now'. Without knowing (or wanting to know) much about the politics of the local teen set, Garrett had gotten the impression that the two girls were barely frienemies, basically rivals, though Cordy would never admit that anyone was in a position to offer her any real competition for anything. He knew they had been to some of the same parties, and clearly a few they shouldn't have, but after the Delta Zeta Kappa incident, he had thought they had parted company for good.

Garrett sighed. He didn't suppose it mattered why now. The two of them had been together last night, and that had been enough to tempt that sick monster Wilkins to get her involved. Still... Phoenix Arizona? In the middle of the week? Why?

On some kind of spree he supposed. Almost certainly nothing he would have approved of, but probably nothing worse than he would have done at their age. Well, nothing worse than he would have done if he'd had an ATM card and a very indulgent father anyway.

It wasn't drugs, or if it was they hadn't scored, at least according to their tox screens. Of course, the third trimmest was hardly the time that a pregnant girl, who wasn't already a junkie, was going to start experimenting.

A different thought struck Garrett. Road trip, pregnant girl, wads of cash... kinda like old times. A post-viability abortion? If so, why Arizona. It would be just as illegal here as in California. And how would Wilkins know to attack them here?

Because he or one of his henchmen had arranged for someone here to say they would do it probably. A real doctor maybe, in a hospital no less; safe, secret, and too cheap to be true. A trap. Scumbag.

And nothing in it for Cordelia, probably. Just trying to help out a friend. Just happening to be the wrong man's daughter. The kind of man whose 'friends' assumed he'd be only too happy to sacrifice her if enough money and power was dangled in front of his face.

Garrett Chase had never been, by nature, an introspective person. This didn't seem like a really great time to start. Instead, he considered what his next moves should be in keeping Wilkins unsuspicious until he could be eliminated, assessing what the new power structure was likely to be and how to best take advantage of it (including whether it might not be a great time to move to Tokyo), and how to thwart whatever those creeps had planned for Ms. Summers, more or less just for spite.

The last part seemed like the most obvious. The fact that Buffy had been found without ID suggested that Wilkins and Friends didn't mean for her to be identified. Either she was meant to stay a Jane Doe or he was meant to misidentify her as per instructions he would receive from Ron. Either way, it seemed like a good step one would be to call her parents. Well no, not to call them. Not with Ron still thinking he was on board. But to make sure they got called.

Garrett's phone rang. “Speak of the Devil,” he answered it cheerfully. “Ron you old scoundrel, I was just about to call you back.”

“Jeez,” Ron said sounding a little annoyed and a lot relieved, “Where have you been? We need you in—”

“Phoenix,” Garrett anticipated “already here. The hospital actually called me before you did and by the time I checked my messages...” Garrett let Ron here about one tenth of one percent of what he was feeling, which still sounded fairly shaken up and a little bit resentful. “I mean, God have mercy, Ron! I know it's all for the big guy, but you really threw me for a loop with this one. I don't know what I'm going to tell her mother.”

“Listen, I was just as surprised as—” the piece of crap started in, somewhere between apology and defense. Then he suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute,” he asked worriedly, “What hospital?”

*****

“Well, Mr. Rosenberg,” Dr. Isaacs said matter-of-factly, “so far your sister-in-law's case is still a bit of a mystery.”

“Well but what's her prognosis look like?” Malcolm asked worriedly. “When will she wake up?” the look the doctor gave him was not encouraging. Isaacs took a deep breath like he was going to speak but he didn't speak immediately.

“She will? Won't she,” Malcolm persisted, “Wake up? Eventually?”

Still with the pausing, the hesitation as if formulating exactly how best to say something really, really awful. The Doctor's mouth opened. If he didn't say something in the next tenth of a second, Malcolm thought he would die.

“Doctor don't tell me there's a chance she might not wake up!” Malcolm wasn't literally wringing his hands. He was careful not to do that. People made fun. He didn't think he could handle that today. He was too sick with worry to handle being made fun of for worrying.

“It's hard to say,” Isaacs hedged. No, he didn't hedge. He just didn't commit either. He was infuriatingly calm. Relaxed even. He was relaxed. How could a person be relaxed in a place like this? It was inhuman. There ought to be a law against being that relaxed.

He was talking all about electrical signals in the brain now and throwing around words like pre-frontal lobes and cerebral cortex. When he finally got to something Malcolm thought he understood, he was afraid to understand it.

“So your saying all of the signal are going whiz, bang, ping in the back of the brain with the heart beat regulation and the breathing on her own and stuff, but there's nothing gong on up front with the memories and the dreams and the thoughts and stuff?”

Dr Isaacs indorsed the content of the statement without exactly approving of the language. Malcolm's heart dropped into his stomach and tried to escape through his throat all at the same time, which was quite a trick.

“So, you're saying she might never wake up?” he demanded, consciously focused on not literally jumping out of his skin and melting to a puddle on the floor. “Oh no, Doctor, don't tell me that. It's too horrible. I'm gonna be sixty years old next week. I was gonna take my gorgeous twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend to Tahiti for one last gasp of romance before I start falling to bits. What am I gonna do with a seventeen year-old girl?”

*****

Garrett waited next to his daughter's bed, watching her breathe in and out. I twas all about the waiting now. Waiting for his wife to call him back, or at least for Bob to call him back and say he'd told her. Waiting to see if Ron and the gang really believed that he believed they had nothing to do with Cordelia's condition and that he was going to do what they asked about Ms. Summers. Waiting for the signal that they were ready with their part of that.

Waiting for that idiot administrator to finally find the folded piece of paper with Buffy's mother's phone number that he had so carefully placed among her effects where it looked as if it had been hidden and yet could not be missed if you happened to be looking for anything. Waiting for the signal to start waiting for Cordelia to wake up.

Waiting for Vanessa Brewer to do her job.

The phone rang. It still wasn't his wife. If you could even call her that. She might make a pretty good ex-wife, he mused. She was probably too lazy to fight him for money.

It was a blocked number, but Garrett dealt with a lot of blocked numbers. “Hello,” he answered, tiredly polite, like a receptionist due for a break. It was Holland Manners.

“Listen, Garrett,” he said, “the Wilkins party is a no go.”

Garrett took a deep breath. It wouldn't do him any good to seem angry. Still, there may have been just a bit of an edge to his voice when he asked, “And why exactly is that?”

*****

Snakes. Snakes. More Snakes. Snakes everywhere. “Backed up sewer line!” Snyder hollered to no one in particular. “Because of all this Normal Spring Flooding. Same thing happened in San Diego just last week!”

Bob shook his head. What an idiot. Well, that was what graft and nepotism would get you. Fortunately, the people he was charged with fooling were even stupider. Willfully so. It was the Sunnydale way. A culture of denial, of survival.

Bob looked at his watch. This was a minor distraction. He had other work to get back to. The school was all but evacuated now. Just your basic Hellmouth hijinks. Maybe some little demon dust up, or possibly that poltergeist that sometimes tended to act up this time of year. Let it cool off over the weekend; things would probably be fine by Monday. And if not, he could always have a building inspector shut the place down for a few days until it was.

Snyder of course was beside himself. Acting like it was the end of the world. As far as he was concerned, Sunnydale High was the world and he was the king of it. He'd always been like that, ever since Bob had met him in middle school. Provincial. Small-minded. Self-important.

People who didn't really know Snyder, especially his students, but also a lot of the parents, thought that he ran on pure meanness for meanness' sake or that he was a snake who only cared about himself. But that wasn't true. If it had been, given his background and family connections, he'd probably have Bob's job, little squirrely thing though he was.

No, Snyder's problem was that he was too focused, too loyal, too over protective, in much too narrow a context. He said 'my school' the way other people said 'my home' and 'my town' the way most men said 'my country'. And he meant it too.

In a way, Bob guessed he could respect that. But in another way he really, really didn't. And he was impatient to be moving along.

Finally, the last of his officers came out and announced that the building had been thoroughly searched and was empty. Bob left Snyder complaining that not all of his students were accounted for while several of his subordinates tried delicately to point out that they hardly ever were.

Bob went to find someplace where something important might actually be going on.

*****

“See,” Pete declared triumphantly as he turned from the library window and let the blinds he'd been peering around fall back into place, all but sneering at the doubtful looks Debby and Scott were giving him. “They're leaving. We have the place all to ourselves. Now, start looking for the books on this list and I'll go set up the lab.” He started to walk away, then he turned to Scott and added, “Oh and hand me the yellow disk. I'll need that and the paperweight.”

*****

“Feeling any better?” Ms. Graves asked.

“No,” Willow answered honestly. They were sitting in one of the tiny meeting rooms in the Juvenile Detention Center, in metal folding chairs, facing each other across a battered plastic table. Willow sat with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands feeling extra mopey, annoyed by the aggressively cheerful appearance of her canary yellow jumpsuit. She'd read about a jail in Arizona somewhere where they made guys wear hot pink. But being forced to walk through her gloomy existence in this sickeningly bright shade seemed far worse to Willow at the moment.

“Well the good news is,” the lawyer went on with a sort of dogged, professional pleasantness, “there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to bond out of here on Monday. I've spoken to your Uncle Malcolm and he should have the guardianship papers ready for Judge Fondren to sign at the time of your arraignment on the new charges. At that point, the bond will most likely be reinstated on the old charge and we'll get one new court date to either hear or plead both cases.”

“So what's the bad news?” Willow asked, mainly because she figured it was her turn and that was what she was expected to say.

“The doctors still haven't been able to determine the cause of your mother's condition, but based on her symptoms and the test they've been running... they don't really expect her to improve any time soon.”

“I'm the cause,” Willow thought. It was only when Ms. Graves looked at her (slightly startled then quickly assessing) that Willow realized she had done more than think. She had mumbled. Willow stared down at her hands, wishing she could take it back, say she was joking or something. But Ms. Graves was too smart for that.

Or maybe not.

“Willow, no,” she said seriously, reaching across the table and taking her hand. “The doctors said there was no sign of any toxins or external trauma. Whatever you think you did, you didn't cause this. Nobody did, not even your mother.”

Willow shrugged. “Thanks,” she mumbled when it seemed that some word of acknowledgment was required. But she knew better.

*****

Joyce jumped when the phone rang, and in that startled second Hank snatched up the receiver. Joyce swallowed her resentment and tried to stand close enough to hear without actually laying her head against him. Buffy was in the hospital in Arizona. Yes, she was alive. No she was not okay. Yes, the doctors knew she was pregnant, or rather that she had been, until today.


	9. Status Quo Ante

“Pete?” Scott asked nervously. Debby stood behind him, more hiding than being supportive. He cast an eye around the 'lab' his genius friend had set up in the music room floor with all the desks pushed back. From where he was standing, 'lab' didn't seem to be the word for it.

There were candles, incense burners, the cheap-looking crystal ball paperweight they'd stolen from the librarian's office, some kind of long accordion-folded computer print-out with single spaced writing on it, the not-at-all-science-related books they had brought from the library, and in the center of it all stood a twenty-two inch high cheerleading trophy with a tiny golden girl on top.

Pete looked up expectantly, impatient for Scott to spit out his question. “What is all this supposed to do again exactly?”

“It's simple,” Pete explained, eyes shining, still filled with the visions he had been gifted by Her Spirit. “We start the Ritual of Restoration, which calls forth the soul of the undead proxy, thus weakening the veil between the worlds as it passes through and creating an opportunity for the trapped spirit to be released on this plain, after which we will be richly rewarded. Jeez Scotty, keep up.”

“That doesn't sound much like science,” Debby mumbled worriedly, unable to meet his eyes while making her feeble protest.

“Oh, Baby,” Pete agreed, an almost sexual thrill ringing in his husky voice, “we are hell and gone from science! We are about to do some deep, dark, seriously black magic, all fueled by the energy of our friendly neighborhood poltergeist!”

What he didn't tell her was what, exactly, it was going to take to harness that energy to their purpose. What he didn't tell either of them about, was the sacrifice.

*****

“I don't know what to tell you, doctor!” the frantic nurse nearly wept as she followed the shouting physician out of the tiny ICU room and down the corridor towards the nursery as instructed.

“I want to know who misrerecorded the date of this young woman's pregnancy by nearly three months!” Dr. Stangle demanded, slamming the patient's door behind them. “That's what I want to know! I mean, my God, how hard is it actually listen to what the doctors tell you and write it on the goddamned chart!?! Do you know you nearly killed this girl?”

“But Dr. Francin wrote—”

“I don't want to hear your excuses!” Stangle shouted as they passed a portly, dull favored, sixtyish nurse without really seeing her or the curtained cart she was pushing. “The chart says that girl came in here 27 weeks pregnant. If I'd known—” the surgeon shook her head in disgust. “She should have had a C-section the first minute she was here. We could have completed her radiology work up more thoroughly and in half the time. We could have put her under faster and for longer. We could have done more work.”

“But, doctor, I saw the ultra sounds myself and—”

“Then you should have known better! If you hadn't been busy playing around with feeding tubes—”

“But doctor, we were forcing high nutrient IV fluids and she was still losing weight so fast—”

“Losing w—? She'd only been here five hours when you put the damn thing in. At least if the chart can be believed, which I admit—”

The nurse straightened her back and dug deep into her reservoirs of dignity and courage, “Dr. Francin approved everything to the minute he went off shift,” she insisted. “If you have a prob—”

“Don't take that tone with me!” Stangle countered hotly, as she took two tries to punch her security code in at the nursery door. “The child weighs nearly eight pounds. Lungs like an opera singer. He's 39 weeks if he's a day!”

“We put down 27 weeks because he measured—” the nurse went on insisting stubbornly, but the doctor cut her off again.

“Obviously, you or somebody got it down wrong, because this boy—!”

The nurse gasped.  The horror in her eyes stopped the doctor's tongue and made her turn her face and, for the first time, really look at the nursery bassinet to which she had just pointed so dramatically. It was empty save for a tiny, broken wristband that read 'Baby Girl Summers'. The child was gone!

*****

“Oh!OH!! **OH!!!** ,”Drusilla wailed, falling on the floor and clutching her skull, writhing as if in agony. “wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong!” Edwards only glared and held Zanya closer, whispering soothing words into her hair, assuring her that there was no cause for alarm. But Spike groaned and stumbled to his feet, coming to his lady's assistance.

He felt it too, the sense of supernatural dread. Admittedly he may only have felt it _because_ of Dru's reaction. It didn't matter. He'd known her long enough to know when she was reacting to something real. “My Angel!” she cried out in distress as Spike held her firmly in his arms so that she could do herself no harm, “Oh, my Angel, No!”

Suddenly, the seemingly lifeless remains of Angelus twitched and shook in horrible paroxysms of agony. He cried out in a loud voice for the first time since he had been burned, “Ahhh! Ohhh! Naaah!” Nothing more intelligible that that. But the tone of desperate pleading to be spared was unmistakable to ears so accustomed to broken, near-dead cries for mercy.

Angel's back arched and he scrabbled at the floor with his hands as if trying to push himself up, to stand. But his legs remained useless, unsupportive. Then he fell back to rest with one last groan that sounded for all the world like the very essence of relief and was still again. At that moment, the vampires' ears were met with the muffled report of a gunshot in the school above.

Rising from a startled, momentarily distracted Spike's embrace, Drusilla ran to Angel and fell down upon his makeshift pallet, pulling him into her arms shaking him like a rag doll and weeping, sobbing, shrieking as if he'd been dusted. “No!No!No!No!No!No! Not my Angel! Not my Angel!”

Spike approached her carefully. He tried to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she growled like a dog who honestly means to bite and violently shook him off. “You'll not touch him!” she barked. “As long as he's still in there too, I won't let you harm a hair on his head.”

Spike opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't think what to say. The look of horror in Edwards' eyes indicated that he had reached the same conclusion as Spike had about what just happened and was equally at a loss for a reaction.

Even Zanya, who knew nothing, knew that everything was suddenly very wrong. She whimpered and quailed in her lovers arms, even before they heard the crack of the second gunshot.

*****

Hank and Joyce arrived at the hospital in Phoenix around sunset. Something wasn't right. Something besides the obvious. When they asked at the nurses' desk to get Buffy's room number, the nurse called for her supervisor. Who called for a doctor. Who called for an administrator. Who sent a different doctor.

“There's no easy way to say this,” the young man began, and even though she had been told that Buffy was not dead, Joyce had to ask again. For once Hank was supportive, not embarrassed or apologetic for her 'over reacting', and that scared her.

“Actually, your daughter is doing much better than expected,” he explained nervously, clearly still wanting to be anywhere but there. “The damage to her internal organs is much less extensive than was initially feared, her bone fractures are healing, well... I hesitate to used the word 'miraculously', but—and her EEGs are... well I'd like to see more activity in the frontal lobes, but.... There is every reason to hope that she may, eventually regain consciousness after all.”

“Oh, my God! That's great news,” Joyce gasped, near tears of relief.

Hank folded his arms and scowled. “So what's the problem?” he demanded flatly. “Why the hot-potato routine.” Joyce was on the verge of being embarrassed and apologetic for him when the squirrelly little doctor finally let the other shoe drop.

“It's the baby,” he explained morosely. “She's gone.”

“Oh Dear Lord,” Joyce choked out, feeling a dull ache of dread and confusion spread out from the pit of her stomach. She hadn't thought she'd even assimilated the news that Buffy had a child, and now...

“Well, twenty-seven weeks...” Hank began, in a lets-put-this-in-perspective kind of tone.

The doctor looked as horrified as Joyce felt, but it turned out to be for a different reason. Because he had just realized his mistake. “You don't understand,” he explained. “Your daughter's baby is not dead. She's missing. It appears that she may have been, well, kidnapped.”

“Wait a minute,” Hank said, sounding not shocked but puzzled, which meant he probably _was_ in shock, actually. All eyes turned to him. “I thought they told us on the phone that Buffy's baby was a boy.”

*****

“Thank you, Dr. Carsters,” Andrew Giles said, “Keep me posted if you have any further news.”

“Well?” Rupert demanded, arms crossed, glaring.

“They've arrived safely in Los Angeles. The baby seems healthy and normal. He's doing well on formula, has a good appetite. They should be fine there for as long as necessary.”

“Jolly good(!)” Rupert mocked him. “That'll be a great comfort when Buffy wakes up and kills us all.”

“Oh, enough with the dramatics, Rupert!” Andrew snapped in frustration. “Or aren't you the same person who spent all of yesterday trying to convince me that your Slayer is grown up enough to handle life the way it is?”

“Grown up enough to—!?! You've just had her newborn child kidnapped from the hospital while she was unconscious! How would anybody—? Bloody hell!” Rupert was growing nearly apoplectic now, red in the face, head shaking.

“Rupert please—” Andrew began to admonish him firmly, preparing to try to reason with him, to explain one more time why his plan was for the best and would work, for everyone.

“I can't—I can't have this conversation with—!” Rupert seemed to calm suddenly, or maybe just to bump up against a wall emotionally. He held his forehead in both hands, fingers threading into his hair, head still shaking. When he spoke, without looking up, his voice was tight and angry. “You don't understand, and you never will.”

Suddenly, purposefully, he rose from his hospital bed and began rummaging through the few cabinets in the room.  “Rupert what are you—?” Andrew started to ask.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” Rupert retorted, shaking the wadded up suit of his dirty clothes that he had found. “I'm getting dressed and going to Los Angeles to get my son.”

*****

Five o'clock Sunday morning found Spike kicked back in Angel's bed, reading the Sun-Times, having a good laugh at the latest front pager. Murder/Suicide. Two young boys found dead in the high school on the morning after the Sadie Hawkins dance.  Evidently a lovers quarrel. Or maybe an unrequited. The parents were being tight lipped, but supposedly 'sources' said that there was evidence among their possessions of 'a possible romantic link.'

Strangely, a young lady, third musketeer or maybe third wheel, was missing, still wanted for questioning. Well... she'd certainly been nowhere to be seen when Spike and his crew had strolled past the bodies on their way to greener pastures on Friday night.

But it had to be the witch. The one who had turned Angel into... what he was.

“Dru?” Spike asked worriedly, suddenly no longer in a laughing mood, “aren't you coming to bed?” He could see her through the gap in the bed-curtains, sitting up in the easy chair, holding Angel in her arms, and beyond them the door to the tiny kitchen, where Edwards and his lady had set up housekeeping. Vampires didn't cook that much.

“Not tired,” Drusilla insisted stubbornly. Her voice was so small, so tight.... Spike sat up, suddenly tense. The sound was subtle, but once he heard it, he couldn't mistake it. That tiny, suckling smack.

“In the name of Hell!” he cried, thrusting himself to his feet and out of the bed. Angel's belly was actually distended, protruding disgustingly from his skeletal frame. Dru tried to stand as he approached her, but she was too weak. In his panic, Spike pulled Angel from Drusilla's arms so quickly that his still deeply embedded fangs ripped a gash from the top of her shoulder along her collar bone to her neck.

“What in bleeding Jupiter do you think you're doing!” he demanded, beside himself with rage, shaking Angel's withered form at her accusingly. “You can't nurse that soul out of him Dru! Your only hurting yourself! Even if you do make him stronger—”

Drusilla lay on the floor, whimpering, terrified, clutching at her wound. It was no use trying to explain anything to her, Spike realized. This wasn't going to be solved by logic. He stomped one booted foot firmly down on Angel's neck, grabbed his melted face with both hands, twisted and pulled.

Enraged as he was, blood boiling hotter than it ever had in life, Spike wasn't prepared for the sound that Drusilla made when Angel's head was torn violently from his body and both pieces crumbled to dust. Her howl of inhuman anguish ripped his heart open and chilled him to the core, as if he had just shot himself up with ice water.

Weak as she was, she flew at him, claws out. He caught her by the arms seconds before his face would have been flayed open. He was struggling with himself as much as with her, not sure if he wanted to vent his wrath on her or beg her forgiveness. He wanted her to not feel what she felt. Her sorrow, her hatred, her anguish, all for the love of Angel, stung him like a lash of betrayal.

Drusilla had no such division of purpose. As he paused to catch his metaphorical breath and orient himself to the suddenly changed situation, she bashed him hard in the face with the top of her skull. He held tight to her arms as they both crashed to the floor, but a scant second later she was biting his fingers so hard that he had no choice but to let go of her right hand. She twisted and wrenched her left hand free and fled towards the kitchen-turned-bedroom.

Edwards came stomping out to meet her, drawn by the commotion and the screaming, sword raised, expecting an invasion of enemies. His wilted concubine came tramping at his heels, and he shoved Drusilla protectively behind him into her arms.

Taking in the scene, Angel dusted, Dru ripped open, Spike covered in her blood; he shouted at the women to go into the kitchen and barricade the door. Swiftly, they obeyed, and Edwards' sword was at Spike throat, provoking him to renewed rage, before he could even come to grips with the idea that an explanation might be warranted, let alone explain.

Spike blocked Edwards' initial stroke by battering arm against arm, avoiding the blade all together. He followed up with a swift knee to the groin and then a kick to the chest. Edwards flew backwards and was slammed against the kitchen door hard enough to cause it to sag and crack. But before Spike could close on him, he had leapt to his feet, sword still in hand. He brandished his weapon menacingly, but for a moment he did not advance.

“Are you ready to hear me out now?” Spike demanded.

“I'll see you out,” Edwards countered, all fluttering gallantry, ostentatiously assuming a more aggressive stance. From the kitchen, the women could still be heard, Zanya loud but Drusilla louder, wailing and lamenting.

Suddenly, Spike saw it, saw Edwards, saw Drusilla, saw himself for the pitiful fools that they all were. “Forget it,” he laughed, turning to go. “They're all yours, the both of them. Do all the soddin rituals you want. Have a gay old dance with the Slayers.”

Spike smiled at the look of shock and (he was almost sure) envy in Edwards' eyes. “Cheers mate,” he called mockingly over his shoulder. His steps on the stairs were light. He whistled a little tune as he bounced up to street level and sauntered away into the nautical twilight, eyes pealed for a manhole cover, not caring where he slept the day away.

For once in his existence, Spike knew with absolute certainty what he had that was most worthy to be envied.

*****

“Emancipation?” Willow repeated, staring at the documents her uncle had handed her. “I don't understand.”

“I talked with my lawyers,” Uncle Malcolm explained nervously. “And they talked to the prosecutor...” Willow tried not to be bothered by his tone. “Who talked to Judge Fondren...” He did everything nervously, Willow reminded herself. “And then we talked to a few other people here in town...” But he was making _her_ nervous.  She wished he would just spit it out.

Until he did.  All in one breath.

“And everyone agreed that if we pay the maximum fine on each of your changes, including the three felonies, which could be expunged right after your birthday and shouldn't interfere with your college plans after that—which, with the court costs that all comes out to just over $42,000 dollars, which it turns out goes mostly to city and county revenues, so—but then, there wouldn't be any need to hold you for trial or put you on probation, so there would be no obstacle to you becoming emancipated, and even though technically I would still have to be Sheila's guardian, at least until you turn eighteen, I would give you power of attorney to handle her care, and the sell of her real estate holdings should provide you with sufficient income, through college at least; I already got an offer on the Crawford Street House from a young man in the mayor's office, actually, nice guy, kinda nervous, but the duplex on Davis will rent til it sells, so you should even be able to keep the condo until you do start college if you want.”

Willow cocked her head to one side, her face scrunched up in thought. Then she gave her uncle a very worried look indeed. She didn't bother with little details like, 'what house on Crawford Street'. Willow had much more important things to be perplexed about at the moment. “Are you saying we're going to pay off the Mayor and the Sheriff to let me go and let me live by myself?” she asked.

“It's all perfectly legal,” Uncle Malcolm assured her.

Willow still looked very skeptical and maybe just a little queasy, but she said, “Well... then... okay, I guess.”

A part of her thought, okay, this is good news. Getting out of jail and being not-in-trouble anymore _and_ in charge of her own life, nine whole months early.... that was amazing! But most of her was thinking, 'This is what I get for how I've been acting? There is something seriously messed here. It can't be that easy to get away with being that bad. It can't be, it just can't.'

Because that would be wrong.

*****

“Buffy? Honey?” her mom's voice was so, so far away, amplified and distorted. But the old familiar feeling of that warm, strong hand in hers... “Did she jus—she squeezed my hand!” Her voice was breathless, closer, more real-seeming now.

“Hank! Sweetheart! Buffy just squeezed my hand!” What the—Buffy's eyes flew open and her parents' faces popped into view looking harried, joyful, teary-eyed, concerned. Hank reached for her free hand and gripped it tight. Their other hands joined across her bed, making a perfect circle.

“Oh my Angel!” Joyce wept. “I didn't think you'd come back to me.”

Angel! Buffy sat bolt upright, startling both her parents. It was the anguish, fear and confusion in their pleading voices, more than anything, that convinced her to stop trying to get out of bed, to pull her feet back after they had already touched the floor.

She remembered Spike kicking her in the face, the unreality of seeing Angel hanging there, his life-force being drained into Drusilla by that unnatural light, flying through the air and—evidently landing in the hospital. Maybe a hospital in some alternate universe. “What are you guys... why are you looking at each other like that?”

They _smiled_ at each other even more, somewhere between amused and embarrassed, both looking sappy-in-love. “A lot of things have changed since you've been in the hospital, Honey,” her father explained gently. “Looking after you... finally having Dawn home, it's really reminded us what's important.” Joyce looked on with affirmation and affection.

Buffy's head was still swimming. There were so many questions all trying to get out of her mouth at once. Angle-Willow-Kendra-Giles-Xander-Cordy, were they okay? What had happened to Spike-Drusilla-the-Order-of-Terroka-Willy-the-sorry-Snitch? Was anyone safe? But she could only ask one question at a time, and that was... “Who the hell is Dawn?”

Joyce and Hank's looks at each other were pained and worried now, though still eerily in concert, unfathomably co-supportive. “Dawn is what we uh... what we named the baby,” Joyce explained carefully.

Buffy gaped at them for a moment, then she blinked and shook her head as if trying to clear it, like an etch-a-sketch. “I have a _sister_?” she asked, clearly floored.

There was that supportively uncomfortable look passing between them again.

“Well...” Joyce tried to begin, but her courage failed her. She looked at Hank as if in hope of rescue. Even weirder than that, he did in fact rush to her aid. Buffy couldn't quite get used to this new universe.

“Well, yes and no,” he tried to explain, then faltered as Joyce looked on miserably. “The doctors warned us she might not...” Hank began to remind her softly. Joyce nodded, wiping away a few more tears. With deeply gentle, frighteningly solicitous concern Hank asked, “Honey, what's the last thing you remember?”

Violence. Assassins. Angel dying... “Career Day? No...” because then there had been Christmas and Ted and things that hatched from eggs... or did some of that happen before instead of after? Or had she dreamed part or all of that? Willow hitting her on the head? Didn't seem likely did it?

“I'm not sure.” Buffy mumbled numbly. “What day is it now?” At all the hesitation around her Buffy became agitated, her voice escalating into a panicked, desperate whining, “And seriously, who is this Dawn person? And... and... how can she be 'yes and no' my sister!?! This doesn't make any sense, none of it!”

“Buffy, we adopted Dawn,” Joyce began explaining gently. “We didn't know if or when you were going to wake up, so...”

Buffy cocked her head to the side. Okay, now this was making even less sense. “So, you decided to replace me?” she asked with mild-sounding skepticism. Somehow all of a sudden, nothing seemed real enough to be upset about. But things got real again in a hurry.

“Buffy...” Hank supplied, “Dawn is... was...” He looked at Joyce.

“Is,” she agreed.

“...Your baby,” he concluded.

Buffy was frozen for a moment, and then she burst out laughing. They both had looked and sounded so deadly serious. They had really had her going right up until—

Hank and Joyce Summers were not laughing. This wasn't the kind of thing they would joke about. And who jokes with someone who's just woken up from a coma?

The realization crossed Buffy's mind that a doctor or nurse or something probably should have been called by now, but she ignored it. This conversation was too important to be interrupted. “Okay,” she said with forced calm, fighting down panic, “Be kind, rewind. Who is my what now?”

“You were in a bad accident,” Hank circled around the back of explaining. “The doctors warned us that i—when you woke up there might be significant memory loss....”

“But I don't even remember—Oh, No! Oh, God! This is _not_ happening!” Angel? She was pretty sure he had lived past Career Day now that she thought about it because there were memories of... or at least of moving _toward_... But no; no phone company, no red cross, no little vampires.

Another worrying thought struck her. “It's not Xander is it?” she asked, face scrunched up in a way that suggested her fingers might be crossed if she had her hands free.

“Oh, Honey, no,” Joyce assured her, squeezing her hand tighter.

“Xander still comes to visit Cordelia every day,” Hank interjected as if this somehow explained something. Buffy let it go, one more tree in the forest.

“Okay...” she said. “Help me out here. Spring, Fall, Summer, Christmas; L.A., Sunnydale? Give me a when and a where here.”

But their best guess at a 'when' turned out to be early September _ish_ , which didn't help with the where and therefore the who at all. Besides, Buffy _remembered_ September. She was sure of it. And yes, they assured her, they were all thinking of September of the same year, 1997, almost exactly one year earlier.

Buffy's parents had a conversation of looks. Hank nodded and announce the conclusion, “We should show her the pictures.” Pictures? Of the baby. Of course, of the baby.

“Oh,” Buffy said as she turned the pages of the little album that Joyce pulled out of her purse. It was all she could think to say. She tried to attach the tiny infant in the photo's—a light skinned African-American girl with a big toothless grin and almost no hair—to phrases like 'my baby', 'my daughter', 'my child.' If felt—huge guilt here—not true. Buffy shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, “I'm drawing a total blank.”

“It's okay,” they assured her repeatedly, although they sounded very definitely like it wasn't. Buffy wanted to change the subject but she was suddenly ashamed for them to _know_ she wanted to change the subject. What kind of mom reacted to the news that she had a healthy baby girl waiting at home by wanting to change the subject? Still....

Buffy thought about suggesting they call the doctor in. At least that was a subject change that couldn't be easily criticized. But there was one thing she had to ask no matter how it made her look, one thing she had to know before everyone got distracted by all the medicalness of everything.

“What about my friends?” She asked, “Willow and everyone? How are they doing? Is everyone okay? Are they...” dead or anything... She laughed nervously, “Having too much fun without me?”

*****

“That's right, Big Boy,” Willow drawled out confidently, feeling juiced, ready for action. “Come and get it!”

But her confidence faltered as she suddenly found that instead of a prospective victim lying at her feet she had a snarling monster in her face. How did that happen, exactly? Dazed, confused and working up to being terrified, she took two stumbling steps backward as Xander grabbed the vamp by the collar and Oz leapt from his suddenly very distant hiding place.

She should have had the stake, Willow realized. That would have been the better plan. Or they should have all jumped on him as soon as his head and back were out.  That would have been even better.

Whatever. It didn't matter now. Everything was getting seriously _in medias res_ here, no time for woulda-shoulda-couldas. Willow was still groping for the answer to 'what next?' when she was slammed to earth by the weight of Xander's thrown body, mooting yet another point.

“He's getting away!” she shouted as the vamp galloped for the fence. “And...” but she couldn't say 'and thank God!' Couldn't say that the 'target' clearly had the upper hand and (if he hadn't chosen to flee) probably could have killed them all. “...Oww,” she finished, more or less honestly.

Oz tried his stake throwing thing again, just for the hell of it, she thought. It was getting to be a running joke now. “That really never works.”

Suddenly, Willow felt herself shaking with retroactive fear. She blocked the boys out for a moment, getting a hold of herself in time to hear Xander half shout at her, almost accusingly, “Okay, and the second problem I'm having!?! 'Come and get it, Big Boy?'”

Willow was suddenly selfconscious, defensive. He made it sound dirtier than she had meant it to sound. “Well,” she stammered, “the Slayer always says a pun or a witty play on words, and I think it throws the vampires off, and... it makes them _frightened_ because I'm wisecrackin'”

They so weren't with her on this one. Xander had not-buying-in face and Oz almost literally didn't seem to be with them at all, lost in thought. “Okay, I didn't really have a chance to work on that one,” Willow babbled on, getting even more defensive, “but _you_ try it every time!”

Xander didn't bother to point out that he _didn't_ try it, and that was sort of the point. Only Buffy could really be that... he sighed and found himself speaking without thinking as usual. “I've always been amazed with how Buffy fought,” he mused wistfully, “but in a way, I feel like we took her punning for granted.”

“Xander,” Willow snaped at him sharply, slugging him on the arm a little too hard, “past tense rule!”

The knife twists in his heart and he is guilty. “Oh, sorry.” he meandered into a miserably lame back peddle. “I just meant we in the past took it for granted and, uh . . . we won't when she … wakes up.”

Oz suddenly stilled and gestured for the others to do the same. They stopped talking and walking, but not fidgeting. Oz was used to that and good at being patient. “Listen,” he hissed, almost subaudibly.

They did listen, and eventually were able to look at what was rustling the brush on the other side of the graveyard. It was Drusilla, in a long red dress, making for a certain crypt that they all knew well, the back door to the Hellmouth.

They did what any red-blooded gang of vampire slaying enthusiasts would do in their situation. They held their collective breath until she had disappeared inside, then they made a dash for the van and got the hell out of there.

“We have to tell Giles,” Willow pleaded all the way back to her condo/HQ.

“Why?” Xander challenged. “So he can yell at us for even being out here again?”

“We need his help,” Willow argued, looking to Oz for support, not finding any.

“That's _not_ what we need, and you know it,” Xander corrected her bitterly.

Oz nodded. “We need a Vampire Slayer.”

*****

The whole day and half of the evening had been taken up by tests, all of which said that Buffy was fine. “I can go home then, right?” she asked the doctors and nurses hopefully, one by one.

She so didn't want to still be in a hospital when it was time for sleep, the normal kind. Especially not knowing that Cordelia was still unnormally sleeping in the room next door. Her father had already come by for the obligatory awkward small talk, which was just about more than Buffy could handle, but not quite.

But no one, not the doctors, not the nurses, and definitely not her parents took Buffy's suggestion that it was obviously checkout time seriously at all. She'd even tried (despite the huge, flashing guilt alarm that went off when she did it) pretending that she couldn't wait another day to get home and see the baby, thus securing her place in the Crappy Parenting Hall of Fame.

Actually, the one thing Buffy wasn't looking forward to at all about going home was facing that tiny stranger... which made it especially unpleasant when her father disappeared to 'check on Dawn' and came back with her. Surprise.

Dawn cried when Hank tried to put her into Buffy's arms. No surprise. Buffy felt stiff and awkward and more terrified of her than anything anyone had ever tried to foist on her before, including a certain very thick, very old book about Vampyres. Nonetheless, the baby ended up in Buffy's lap, with one of her arms curled uncomfotably behind its little head at what she was almost sure was the wrong angle, while Joyce looked on worried-but-trying-not-to-be-disapprovingly.

After a while, Dawn quit fussing quite so much. She seemed to be getting sleepy.  Then with a skeptical look up at Buffy's stiffly smiling face, a look that said, 'no indeed, this will never do', she burst out wailing.

The sound was not so much distressed as demanding, Buffy thought, as Joyce bustled forward at her tiny majesty's command to hold and sooth her.  Hank said something about taking her home so that she wouldn't be disturbing Buffy, and the two of them, _both_ of them, went to do exactly that. All night.

But it wasn't the crying or even the total control of her parents (to the point of causing them to abandon her on her first night back among the living) that Buffy found most disturbing. It was that _look_ that the little girl had given her. The expression on her tiny face. There was something familiar about it, something Buffy couldn't quite put her finger on. Until she did.

'I t'ink dare's been a bit of a misunderstanding somewhere,' Buffy though mildly sardonically, smiling with relief. And the minute she was alone, she reached for the phone and called Willow.

*****

“Yes,” Giles grumbled snidely into the phone, cradling it between his ear and shoulder as he held little Edmund in the crook of one arm and gripped the bottle of formula in his other hand. “I'm aware that there is a lot of Demonic activity in Cleveland, and in Boston as well. … Yes, well, but it happens you know, that Sunnydale is still on a Hellmouth....

"Of course I know it's closed! But it's not gone!... Stretched thin!?! You have more active Slayers at your disposable than any Council in history!... no I cannot _just_ keep an eye on things! I am struggling, in fact to keep a lid on things!

"I'm supposed to be on long term family leave for God's sa—what's that supposed to mean, 'my own doing.' I mean, _family_ leave is usually one's own doing, isn't it?... No, of course you didn't.

"Look, just give it some thought will you...” under his breath, he grumbled, as he finessed the bottle out of Edmund's mouth and used several fingers on that same hand to replace the receiver, “... if things ever settle down in the hell that is Cleveland.”

Hampered as he was in his movements, Giles was not able to hang up the phone with nearly the force he would have liked. So, he was more than a bit taken aback to hear the thunderous crash that coincided with that moment.

Until her realized that his door had been kicked open. And like a vision—a pale, angular, angry vision—Edmund's mother stood before him.

“Buffy?” he gasps stupidly, stunned. “You're... awake!”

“That's right,” she snapped, head rolling, brittle voiced, hands on hips, “You wanna tell me what's going on here?” 


End file.
